How can the EU help ordinary citizens make sense of how their funds are spent? #EUdata
Administrations at all levels should seek to communicate information on how EU funds are spent in the easiest possible language, and make use of the opportunities provided by technological progress. These were the evidence-based policy recommendations of the LSE-led team looking at how data transparency and accessibility could be further improved in the EU. Best practices, such as daily updates to websites, provision of additional information in the form of digital maps, and the use of social and mass media were also identified.
Databases should be compatible and fully searchable, visualisation tools such as digital maps should be used, and data should be allowed to be aggregated. Finally, we suggest that the EU’s Financial Transparency System should be reviewed in order for it to be fully operational.
Making the complex accessible
EU funds have transparency and accessibility requirements (as set out by EU primary law and secondary legislation). The key objective is to render a complex system more accessible for the ordinary citizen. But how are those requirements managed? The LSE-led team included Professor Roger Levy, Dr Michèle Finck and Katharina Ehrhart. This was a consortium project with the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).
Our methodological approach for analysing how those requirements were managed comprised of a range of qualitative research techniques: Desk research, legal analysis and case studies, including semi-structured interviews. All were essential for the cross-country and cross-fund analysis that followed. The periods under scrutiny were the Multiannual Financial Frameworks (MFF) 2007 – 2013, and in particular 2014 – 2020.
Shared management funds
The team scrutinised funds in shared management by national and regional authorities. The various case studies analysed the so-called “lists of beneficiaries” for the following Member States and regions: Belgium (Wallonia), Finland, France (Auvergne Rhône-Alpes), Germany (Baden-Württemberg), Italy (Lombardy), and Poland, see graph below¹.
Direct and indirect fund management
The Financial Transparency System allows access to information about beneficiaries of funds in direct management by the EU and its bodies and seems to work relatively well, although improvements could be made.
The team briefly looked at funds in indirect management. Taking the EuropeAid website as an example, they concluded that it did not provide detailed information (only on the largest recipients) and was not formulated in the clearest manner. Lastly, the team considered the European Development Fund. A common finding was the need to increase administrative capacity in programme management and impact evaluation, acknowledging that the challenge varied between large federal states, such as Nigeria, and small islands, such as Vanuatu.
Differing degrees of compliance
The team found that, while overall most legal requirements were adhered to across the EU, degrees of compliance differed to some extent between Member States and across funds. One interesting insight worth highlighting was that interviewees disagreed on whether decentralisation was a factor furthering or hindering transparency.
More about the study
The report was presented to the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control on 14 July 2016 by Dr Jorge Núñez (CEPS) and Katharina Ehrhart (@KAEhrhart).
To watch the video, click here (starting at 2 hours and 40 minutes).
To read the full study, click here.
¹Case studies were undertaken by Dr Michèle Finck (pilot case study) and our local experts, Jonathan Thompson, Chloé Fabre, Sanna Suomalainen, Katarzyna Krok and Filippo Teoldi.
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