The Court of Auditors has published its report on the Recovery and Resilience Fund (RAF), in which it highlights the risk of delays in the implementation of projects.

In more detail, the Court of Auditors published the audit report on “Recovery and Resilience Fund: The project monitoring procedures ensure the timely detection and treatment of any delays during their implementation”.

The advisors of the Court of Auditors stress that the audit carried out “focuses on the risk of delays during the implementation of projects, the occurrence of which may result in either an “accumulation” of implemented projects at the end of the TAA application period with the risk of non-efficient use of the corresponding of funds and occurrence of irregularities, or loss of EU funding”.

Specifically, after the audit, five conclusions were drawn up regarding the institutional framework and monitoring procedures of TAA projects, which are:

1. Inadequate timetables: Absence of mandatory interim project implementation timetables, beyond the milestones agreed with the EU and absence of procedures to prevent the risk of delays from occurring.

2. Faulty implementation by the involved bodies of the procedures for monitoring the maturity and implementation of the projects, as a result of which no delays in the achievement of milestones have been recorded.

3. Understaffing of the implementing bodies, resulting in recourse to contracts with private contractors (technical consultants), but without ultimately preventing the faulty implementation of project monitoring procedures within the information system.

4. Limited interconnectivity of the Fund’s information systems with other information systems, resulting in the impossibility of identifying, preventing and dealing with delays.

5. Delays in the maturation and implementation of projects: As a corrective measure, the bodies involved chose to amend the relevant decisions for the integration of the projects, without, however, recording in these decisions the causes of the delays and the measures to deal with them.

Finally, the relevant report of the Court of Auditors includes the recommendations of the Court of Auditors, both to the Recovery and Resilience Fund, and to the involved bodies, for their compliance with the findings of the audit.

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