If the EU were a business, it would be out of business. If people were caught systematically ignoring basic procedures to ensure effective spending in Microsoft or Shell or Suez, they would be fired.
EU accountants have been investigating whether the hundreds of billions spent on regional aid over the past ten years has been well spent.
Judging from the severe criticisms they make, it seems highly doubtful.
There are cases where nobody knew if money was needed or not, but the EU awarded grants anyway.
There are cases where grants were made even if the project was making money.
There are cases where nobody has bothered finding out if the grants were put to good use.
There are cases where people evidently tried to find out but the necessary information was unavailable.
The result is extraordinary confusion. The waste must be colossal. But who could prove it, since they haven’t bothered to keep proper records?
Furthermore the EU’s procedures offer scope for fraud on a breathtaking scale. The whole thing demonstrates the fabulous stupidity and pointlessness of the entire enterprise.
“Concerning the Commission’s preliminary examination of these projects, the Court found that:
- the examination varied in quality, no common approach having been provided for the managing departments until 2003;
- great disparities exist in the quality of the financial and socioeconomic analyses presented in support of aid applications, and many weaknesses were tolerated by the Commission. As a result, major projects were adopted although the data provided did not permit an adequate assessment;
- in spite of the improvements made by the Commission, the factors used to adjust the Community co-financing rate are not yet sufficiently precise. In the case of productive projects, the possibility of granting a loan instead of a subsidy was not examined.
The weaknesses noted give rise to doubts concerning the added value of the special approval process for major projects and have negative repercussions on the later process of ex-post evaluation.
As regards the ex-post evaluation of major projects from the 1994-1999 period (the only such evaluation that it had been possible to carry out at the time of the audit), the Court found that:
- the Member States only rarely carry out individual evaluations, and the evaluations carried out on the Commission’s initiative had very heterogeneous aims and methods;
- the evaluations were severely handicapped by the lack of pertinent and accurate information, both as regards anticipated effects and the initial situations and as regards monitoring, which often prevented an evaluation of the real results of major projects and the drawing of lessons.”
48-page PDF at:
http://eca.europa.eu/portal/pls/portal/docs/1/863518.PDF
(Hat-tip Euro-Med)