When Brussels requests repayment of āirregular expenditures,ā it often takes EU countries one to two years to take action.
āRecoveringā EU funds means requesting the (partial) repayment of money paid to organizations or beneficiaries who were later found not to have complied with funding requirements. It often takes a very long time to get the money back, if it is repaid at all, with 1 to 8% of the funds ultimately being written off.
According to the Court of Auditorsā 2022 Annual Report, the percentage of incorrect expenditures has risen from 3% to 4.2% of the EU budget since 2021. As a result, the actual recovery of funds is becoming an increasingly urgent issue.
Since less than a quarter of the budget is directly managed by the European Commission, and three-quarters is managed jointly with EU countries or other bodies, it can sometimes be difficult to prevent errors and recover funds.
In direct and indirect management, the European Commission is responsible for identifying irregular expenditures and recovering overpaid amounts. In shared management, Brussels delegates these tasks to the EU countries but retains ultimate responsibility.
The auditors now propose reintroducing certain incentive measures from the previous funding period, so that EU countries can recover money in the agricultural sector. In the past period, member states had to repay half of the funds they had not recovered within four to eight years back to the EU budget.