The Commission launched an Action Plan on 16 February 2008 to strengthen the Commission's supervisory role under shared management of structural actions and a progress report adopted on 5 November 2008 highlights that the actions taken by the Commission are already having an impact. The main idea is to help Member States do a better job of checking the eligibility of project expenditure before they submit payment claims to the Commission.
In its report on 10 November, the European Court of Auditors recognises that improvements have taken place. But it also indicated that the level of errors in Structural Funds' payment claims by Member States, which can result in incorrect transfers from the EU budget and subsequent clawbacks by the Commission, remains too high. The Commission is taking tougher measures to suspend payments and make financial clawbacks where Member States fall below standards. Since the beginning of 2008, the Commission has clawed back €843 million – three times more than in the whole of 2007 – and a further €1.5 billion of financial corrections are in the pipeline between now and March 2009. The Commission has also formally suspended payments for seven programmes this year (2 in Italy, 2 inter-regional, and one each in UK, Bulgaria and Luxembourg).
Commission helping Member States to reduce errors
The Cohesion Policy is a decentralised policy, which means that while the Commission defines and agrees on Cohesion Policy investment priorities with the Member States, it is up to the Member States and regions to identify the projects which will benefit from EU support.
The Commission attaches importance to providing guidance and training to all those involved in the management of the EU funds: the "managing authorities" (who manage the programmes), the "intermediate bodies" (acting on behalf of the managing authorities), the final "beneficiaries" (who implement the projects) and the audit authorities. Two major seminars were organised in Brussels in 2008 with the aim of clarifying funding rules, improving controls and reducing errors.
The most common errors are contracts awarded without a proper tender procedure, inadequate documentation to support project expenditure, incorrect co-financing rates and overestimated payment claims.
Funding rules simplified
The Commission is also working with Member States to simplify funding rules. The 2007-2013 programmes have already been simplified by allowing the use of flat-rate payments for overheads in certain cases and making it possible to shorten the period for which beneficiaries have to keep supporting documents. The Commission has also recently proposed an amendment to the rules on projects which generate revenue, so that they will not apply to smaller projects.
