The mission of the Commission of Budgetary Control of the European Parliament finishes its work in Madrid with the majority conclusion that it still ignores how Spain is executing the European funds. The PSOE distances itself from this assessment and maintains that “Spain knows it perfectly.”
The person in charge of presenting conclusions at a press conference was the president of the mission, the German Monika Hohlmeier of the European People’s Party, who has called for more transparency and regretted that the actual execution data is still unknown. Along the same lines, the MEP of the PP, Isabel Benjumea, has pronounced: “Over these days we have had the opportunity to meet with three government ministers and I have asked three times in the three ministries and we do not have the real data on execution We still don’t have it.”
The MEP for Citizens, Eva Poptcheva, lamented that “we do not have the actual execution data and we do not know if it is because the Administration itself does not have it or because they do not want to give it” “There is progress in the execution, but the transparency system is deficient. Of the 23,000 million euros [which is the figure put out to tender according to the Government] we still do not know how many have reached the beneficiary,” added his partner Susana Solís.
For Benjumea it is a clear case of opacity: “The last data provided to us was on August 31, 2021. To this day we still do not know exactly how much has been spent on recovery and resilience funds and today we continue to without having lists of final beneficiaries”. He has highlighted that it is “the one that will allow us to know the good or bad rhythm of execution of the funds that we have in Spain”.
For her part, the vice-president of the Control Commission, the PSOE MEP Isabel García Muñoz, distances herself from the vision that the president considers the majority. “The conclusion is clear: Spain knows where the money is. And now the European Parliament and the president of the Committee on Budgetary Control also know it,” he has come to say, something that Hohlmeier herself has not corroborated, who has insisted on the “lack of transparency”. In fact, the German has admitted that there are no indications of fraud, but based on the fact that the known execution is very low.
The skeptical MEPs are based on the fact that none of the three official execution reports presented by the Government shows the final data for the companies. The CEOE representatives provided their estimate to the control mission that it is around 45% of the 23,000 million mentioned by the Government that is the subject of the tender. That is, about 12,000 million. According to García Muñoz, the 23,000 million reach the real economy.
The controversy over the crime of embezzlement has also opened a gap between the president of the Control Commission and the socialist MEPs. Hohlmeier has confirmed what this newspaper published last Monday about the fact that she herself asked the first vice president, Nadia Calviño, about the reduction, and maintained the need for there to be “zero tolerance against corruption in Spain.” However, García Muñoz has minimized this problem in the work of this parliamentary body. “It was not the object of our mission at all. If it had been so, when we were setting the agenda, it would have been put on the table. At no time was this discussed. We are not competent, the President has said, and they have simply been some questions at the last moment, after an hour and a half in which the ministers have received us”, he has relativized.
For Benjumea, “a concern has been transferred about the impact that this reform of the crime of embezzlement can have, because it can encourage the erroneous use of these funds.” And, in any case, “unfortunately we still don’t have, we still don’t have essential data, which is where the money is and whether or not it’s running correctly. And that’s the big question that remains unanswered. “, insisted the PP MEP.
The parliamentary mission must incorporate its conclusions into a report on the performance of the European Commission in 2021 and whether the institution chaired by Ursula Von der Leyen is adequately supervising Spain’s compliance with its commitments to obtain the funds. It was the only country that already received money that year and a critical report by Hohlmeier approved in the European Parliament will condition future actions by Brussels.
Poptcheva also misses an “impact assessment” of what is being awarded.”It is incredible that, with the amount of money at stake and the strategic and political ambition put into this recovery mechanism, there is no impact assessment system on going”.
The Citizens MEP has concluded that the “European Commission is not rigorous” in a key chapter: the so-called Coffee funds control system that still needs “updates and improvements” when it was promised for December 2021. “It is an internal system for execution data management. But access to the system is not public.”
For his part, the MEP of Catalonia en Comú, Ernest Urtasun, maintains that the mission “has certified the good management of the instrument by the Government and good clues on how to improve its execution.”
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