Brussels, Oct. 21, 2024 (Lusa) - The European Court of Auditors admits cases of double financing with funds from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which finances the PRR, and from other EU programmes, namely charging points for electric cars in Portugal.
"The Court concludes that the systems set up and implemented by the Commission and the member states are not yet sufficient to adequately mitigate the increased risk of double financing between the RRF, cohesion policy funds and the Connecting Europe Facility. Given the weaknesses in the control environment, double financing is unlikely to be detected," the European Court of Auditors (ECA) said in a report published on Monday.
In the document, the ECA's auditor gives the example that, ‘in the case of specific projects without a precise location in the grant contract, such as [...] charging stations for electric vehicles in France and Portugal, the Commission can only verify double funding [from the RRF and the Connecting Europe Facility, CEF] at a later stage during implementation, after the exact locations have been determined."
As a result, "the risk of paying twice for the same thing increases", emphasises the ECA in the information now released.
For this audit, the court examined the legal framework and interviewed officials from the institution and the member states that implement these funds, and then found that the European Commission "introduced additional milestones or adjusted existing milestones related to double funding for seven member states - Belgium, Ireland, Cyprus, Austria, Portugal, Finland and Sweden -", but this only after "having disbursed payments totalling around €4 billion" from the RRF.
The report comes after, in the middle of this month in another document, the court revealed that some milestones and targets "were not satisfactorily met" by Portugal in the payments of the RRF, which finances the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), namely also in electric vehicle charging point projects.
It is up to the European Commission to assess these suspicions and follow up on them, and may ask for additional information or additional actions to fulfil targets and milestones.
It is now also stated in the report that, "during this audit, the court found that, as a precaution, the Czech Republic, France, Italy and Portugal avoided combining the RRF with other EU programmes for specific measures", an option that "helps to mitigate the risk of double funding".
Created to minimise the economic and social consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and facilitate digital and green transitions, the RRF finances the recovery and resilience programmes, such as Portugal's, for reforms and investments until the end of 2026, for a total of €800 billion in current prices.
According to the ECA's accounts, however, the post-pandemic recovery fund supports areas that have been covered by other Community funds, namely those from Cohesion and the Connecting Europe Facility, totalling €358 billion and €34 billion respectively between 2021 and 2027.
In addition, recovery funds finance similar initiatives in transport and energy infrastructure, for which €648 billion is available from the RRF.
In total, the Portuguese recovery and resilience programme is worth €22.2 billion, with €16.3 billion in grants and €5.9 billion in loans from the RRF, which relate to 376 investments and 87 reforms.
This amount corresponds to 8.37% of Portugal's Gross Domestic Product (EIS).
The Portuguese recovery and resilience programme allocates around 57% of the funds to climate objectives and nearly 22% to the country's digital transition.
So far, Portugal has received €6.84 billion in grants and €1.65 billion in loans, with a plan implementation rate of 23%, according to European Commission data available on its website.
ANE/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
