The message of Vítor Caldeira, the president of the European Court of Auditors, is that the European Union must change its spending culture.
“Current legal frameworks for spending do not do enough to encourage better spending,” he told the European Parliament’s budgetary-control committee on Tuesday (5 November). As evidence, he pointed to the error rate for EU spending, which had gone up from 3.9% in 2011 to 4.8% last year – the third rise in a row.
Instead of the current framework, which focuses on whether EU money is spent according to the rules, the Union needs a framework that focuses on the impact that the spending achieves, Caldeira said. “This requires laying down clear objectives, relevant indicators, and expected results,” he told MEPs.
Of 52 objectives that the auditors reviewed in the management plans and annual activity reports of the European Commission’s departments for competition, for transport and for maritime affairs and fisheries, just eight met all of the standard criteria (being specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed). The transport department’s objective to “implement the core transport network by 2030” meets the criteria, since measurable indicators are outlined in its management plan. The objective “to promote a modern urban mobility”, by contrast, does not.
Caldeira stressed that the new multi-annual financial framework, which is expected to be approved by Parliament on 19 November, provides an opportunity to shift the focus towards performance.
In regional aid, for example, a compromise between the Council of Ministers and MEPs would set aside 6% of a programme’s budget as a performance reserve, to be released when certain benchmarks are met.
Johannes Hahn, the European commissioner for regional policy, had initially proposed making more payments conditional upon performance, ie a bigger performance reserve. The compromise is expected to be put to a vote in the Parliament’s regional- policy committee today (7 November).