The Committee on Budgetary Control of the European Parliament (CONT) has presented a report on the execution of the EU Budget “very critical” of the Commission. Not only because “for yet another year, the error rate is growing, and there are already many in a row”, but because the year studied is 2021, “the first with recovery funds”. And although “the mechanism is very complicated”, as Monika Hohlmeier admitted, “it is our obligation to control all the money in the EU and today, we still do not know where the 11,500 million euros delivered to Spain from the NextGenerationEU funds in 2021 are. “.
The German popular politician is the president of the CONT Committee and led the mission of MEPs that visited Spain last February to examine the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (MRR). “This visit was very important”, he explained, “because the Commission is going to deliver an enormous amount of money to the Member States and because it would serve as a first evaluation for a mechanism as complex as the MRR”.
Hohlmeier has highlighted that since Spain is the only country that received payments from European funds in 2021, the meetings with ministers, regional councilors, businessmen, NGOs and journalists “were very enlightening” of the problems that must be fixed “in the coming years and as soon as possible.”
For the president of the Budgetary Control Committee there are two aspects that “are not acceptable”. The first, that a year and a half after the end of the 2021 financial year, not even the Spanish Government has been able to “break down which projects have been carried out and how much money has reached the real economy”. And the second, that the European Commission has not “collaborated adequately” until, after the mission to Spain, the problems were so evident.
“The last time I asked about the money was three weeks ago,” Hohlmeier recalled.. “And today I still have not received any data”, he remarked in a clear criticism of the Government of Pedro Sánchez. “It is unacceptable that the Administration does not have agile and interoperable computer tools to facilitate aggregate searches that inform the citizen and the institutions” of the destination of each of these funds.
In addition, Hohlmeier suggested other “serious concerns”. One of them, the fact that recovery funds are being spent on current spending items, as this newspaper has published regarding subsidies to social agents. “It must be absolutely clear that all European money must go to projects with European added value, not to items from the ordinary national budget,” he cried.
Another serious problem detected in Spain, “and in other Member States”, is the excessive bureaucracy that is slowing down the execution of the MRR. “Some Spanish Autonomous Communities explained to us that they had to send their data, instead of entering it in a common platform with the central government”. Moreover, the final report of the Eurochamber criticizes that “data is sent by email, in Excel sheets, or in other systems because the computer platform of the Ministry of Economy is not compatible with that of the Ministry of Finance nor with that of the Ministry of Rights Social”.
At his side, the component of the report, Jeroen Lenaers (Dutch, also from the European People's Party) remarked that “it is necessary to find a balance between administrative agility and control of every penny”. In fact, there are many countries that “have not yet received a cent from the recovery funds”, remarked Hohlmeier, “when they were supposed to be to recover the Member States after the pandemic, which is already far away in the midst of the crisis due to the Russian war in the Ukraine”.
As the report reflects, the key must be found in “improving the tools as well as reinforcing the templates and capacities” of the officials. Both at the state and community level.
Criticism of the Commission
Hohlmeier has closed his press conference harshly criticizing the Commission. “The CONT committee oversees the budget execution of Brussels”, he recalled, “but at the beginning they did not want to give us any information about the MRR”. That has already been “solved”, he said, “at least in part”. But since the recovery funds are executed at the state level, Hohlmeier demanded from the Executive of Ursula von der Leyen (German like her, popular like her) “more collaboration” and above all, “equal treatment between large and small countries.”
According to the MEP, there is a suspicion that Brussels is using some small countries “as an example” and is turning a blind eye “to other large ones” that, like Spain, have not been able to explain “if and how much money has arrived has done to the real economy” of the MRR funds. “That is not admissible, and the Commission is responsible for defending the financial interests not only of the Union, but of its taxpayers”. More before the appearance of a new mechanism responsible for the delivery of hundreds of billions of recovery funds.