EU Trend Report 2014
Developments in the financial management of the European Union
The EU Trend Report 2014 is the 12th annual report to be issued buy the Netherlands Court of Audit on developments in the financial management of the EU. Its core subject is supervision and control of the expenditure of EU funds in both the Netherlands and the EU as a whole.
Recommendations
As in the previous year, we recommend that the Dutch Ministers of Finance and Foreign Affairs explore opportunities to have all member states publish a compulsory national declaration on their use of EU funds. The declaration should cover not only the use of EU funds but also remittances to the EU, such as customs duties and VAT, and the results achieved with EU funds.
We recommend that the Minister of Finance ensure that the ESM's audit committee can draw on sufficient people, resources and information and that external independent audit be arranged for the EFSF.
We recommend that the State Secretary of the Ministery of Economic Affairs (EZ), who is responsible for the ERDF in the Netherlands, oblige the ERDF managing authority and the beneficiaries to publish, preferably on the internet, what they have achieved with the funds. The Minister should also ensure that stricter agreements are made with the beneficiaries on what they intend to achieve. To this end, an implementation agreement should be introduced in all ERDF regions. The selection of projects should be based on the intended effectiveness and efficiency.
Response government
The government has undertaken to adopt most of our recommendation. However, it will not follow our recommendation to include remittances from the member states to the EU in the national declaration, partly because the European Court of Auditors has expressed a positive opinion on remittances for many years and because the European Commission itself is responsible for the controls in place for these funds. We think this is a missed opportunity to gain an insight into the regularity of remittances at member state level.
The government and the ERDF managing authority have already started to implement some of our recommendations. In the new ERDF programming period for 2014-2020, the managing authority will give greater priority to selecting projects on the basis of their effectiveness and efficiency.