PSD MEPs Carlos Coelho and José Manuel Fernandes today questioned the European Commission on “the effectiveness and efficiency of the Portuguese government’s use of European funds”, following a report by the Court of Auditors (TdC).
The MEPs want to know, in particular, if “the concerns raised by the TdC (about the incipient implementation of the funds and the deficiencies and inconsistencies in the accounting records and monitoring) give rise to any action plan or review by the European Commission to ensure the correct and efficient use of the funds in Portugal”.
The signatories also want to know if the EU executive is aware of any efforts by Lisbon to resolve “recurring delays” identified in the report ‘Financial Flows between Portugal and the European Union and execution of European funds in 2022′ and which will have “additional costs of around 45 million euros in interest over ten years”.
At issue here is the Court of Auditors’ assessment of the implementation of the Portugal 2030 (PT 2030) program funds, which was considered “very incipient” two years after the start of the programming period.
“Two years after the start of the respective programming period, the implementation of the PT 2030 was at an incipient stage,” the report concluded.
In the letter, headed by Carlos Coelho and José Manuel Fernandes, but signed by the other four PSD MEPs, the Commission is also asked about any recommended measures to ensure the future effectiveness of payments under the Portugal 2023 program and the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).
The MEPs also point out that “of the more than 24 billion euros in European funds for the 2021-2027 programming period, only 353.9 million were received in the first two years as pre-financing, which means that Portugal is not making any effort to implement these funds, but is limited to automatically receiving the small amount that is advanced by the European Commission.”
The TdC also pointed to an “incorrect and inconsistent” accounting of the PRR values in the General State Account (CGE) in 2022 and noted, in the report released on Tuesday, that at the end of 2022, the PRR available to beneficiaries was 1.410 billion euros, “which represented 8.5% of the total planned allocation”.
On the same day, the Minister for the Presidency, Mariana Vieira da Silva, insisted that the assessment referred to 2022 and that 2023 was “a key year for the PRR to get off to a stronger start”.
Vieira da Silva also defended the fact that there are no delays in the application of these funds in the country, considering that each project “has its own timeframe” that stems from the definition of the idea, the decision of what to do, the ordering of materials and their execution in concrete terms.
