Max Gösswein, and Dieter Böckem, both from the investment for cohesion, growth and inclusion Directorate, and Marton Baranyi, Directorate of the Presidency. — A new Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation came into force in January 2021, and is applicable whenever breaches of the principles of the rule of law pose a potential risk to EU financial interests. The introduction of this new instrument to enforce the application of the rule of law means…

Interview with Martin Weber, ECA Director — The ECA’s ‘Investment for cohesion, growth and inclusion’ audit directorate is the largest one in terms of staff. But why? Only because of the size of the cohesion policy budget, or does it also reflect the fact that auditing cohesion is particularly complex? For Martin Weber, who has already worked…

By Andrey Novakov, Member of the European Parliament When the pandemic hit the European Union in early 2020, it also affected and endangered the economic and social convergence process supported by the various EU funds in the cohesion area. The NextGenerationEu initiative (NGEU) is intended to address the pandemic’s economic…

Interview with Younous Omarjee, Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Regional Development — With 42 members and 38 substitute members, the European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development (REGI) is among the institution’s largest, and is responsible for preparing legislation and scrutinising the European Commission’s work on cohesion policy. Given the variety of topics addressed by cohesion policy, the complexity of the co-decision procedure…

By Cristina Jianu, Investment for Cohesion, Growth and Inclusion Directorate, and Bernard Witkos, cabinet of Marek Opiola, ECA member — Cohesion policy is the EU’s main investment tool for promoting economic, social and territorial development. Increasing focus on the performance of cohesion policy has been on the agenda for many years, but it has gathered pace since the financial crisis in 2008, when shrinking public finances in many Member States…

For public auditors, auditing policy performance relates by and large to the effectiveness of any given policy. It involves identifying and measuring the impact of policy implementation, which most often takes place through specific programmes and projects. In cohesion policy and other policy areas, many factors come into play, which…

The launch of the NextGenerationEu initiative has added an extra dimension to the audit of EU expenditure. Not least for the national audit authorities, who not only have to cover significantly more money in their audit activities, but must also tailor their assessment procedure to the different payment conditions created…

Member States’ National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) have now been designed, submitted and approved, and the first steps have been taken to implement them. This has extended the domain public auditors have to cover, not only in terms of size but also in terms of the new disbursement criteria…

Interview with Iliana Ivanova, ECA Member and Chair of the ECA audit chamber Investment for cohesion, growth and inclusion — Cohesion funds constitute a substantial part of the EU budget. They are spent through ‘shared management’, meaning that both the European Commission and authorities in the Member States are jointly in charge of running a particular programme. Around 70% of EU programmes are funded this way, including most of the…