The Court of Auditors has published its report on the Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF), in which it highlights the risk of delays in the implementation of projects.
The audit focuses on the risk of delays in project implementation, the occurrence of which may result in either a 'backlog' of projects being implemented at the end of the Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF) implementation period, with the risk of inefficient use of the corresponding funds and irregularities, or the loss of EU funding.
The audit highlighted the following findings concerning the institutional framework and the monitoring procedures for the Fund's projects:
- Inadequate timetables: absence of mandatory interim project implementation schedules beyond the agreed milestones with the EU and absence of procedures to prevent the risk of delays.
- Poor implementation by stakeholders of procedures for monitoring the maturity and implementation of projects, resulting in no delays in reaching milestones.
- Understaffing of the implementing agencies, resulting in the use of contracts with private contractors (technical consultants), ultimately having prevented the poor implementation of project monitoring procedures within the information system.
- Limited interconnectivity of the Fund's information systems with other information systems, which makes it impossible to identify, prevent and deal with delays.
- Delays in the maturity and implementation of projects: As a remedial measure, the stakeholders chose to amend the relevant project inclusion decisions but without recording in these decisions the causes of the delays and the measures to address them.
The report also includes the Court's recommendations to both the Recovery and Resilience Fund and the stakeholders to comply with the audit findings.
The report is available on the official website of the Court of Auditors HERE.
