The EU Commission would assess whether there was a need to incentivise the bloc’s countries to shorten the time it took to recover improper payments, a spokesman stated after the European Court of Auditors (ECA) highlighted the protracted process of returning improper payments to the EU budget, according to Euractiv.
In a report published on May 7, the ECA warned that recovering misspent EU money could take years, with further possible prolongation. According to the ECA, that posed a risk, especially related to adjustments to the costs of direct aid to farmers. The main reason is that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), valid until 2027, no longer includes the 2006 principle that member states should bear part of the unrecovered money if the process is delayed.
The ECA also found irregular expenditure by the European agriculture guarantee fund of €2.4 billion between 2007 and 2022, of which 52% was recovered by the end of 2022, 9% was written off and 39% remained unrecovered.
The Commission will do this assessment insofar as it is observed that the recovery rate deteriorates.
France, Italy, Spain, and Poland reported the highest amounts of non-recurrent expenditure of €2.4 billion in direct CAP payments for 2007-2022. Recovery rates were highest in Austria (92%) and lowest in Poland (17%). The share of waivers ranged between 0% in Austria and 48% in the Netherlands.
