The EU support was partially effective in strengthening the public administration, the European Court of Auditors says in a special report on the EU financial support to Moldova aimed at strengthening the country’s public administration, IPN reports, quoting the OP-ED “EU assistance for Moldova: local realities vs. operational efficiencies of EU” produced by Dionis Cenusa. This was published on September 5.
The Court selected four areas for auditing: justice, public finance, public health and water, whose value amounts to €218.6 million. According to it, the EU faces problems in the process of implementing its assistance owing to the political crises, macroeconomic imbalance, weak governance and reduced capacities of the local public administration.
The auditors note that the main shortcoming of the European Commission is related to the conceptualization and, respectively, implementation of the assistance projects. The given observation can be interpreted as an allusion to the fact that the EU assistance does not precisely reflect local realities. This supposition is also confirmed by the Court’s option that the EU programs were not sufficiently aligned with Moldovan strategies. Also, the Commission could have responded more quickly when risks associated with the support materialized.
A separate aspect underlined by the Court is that the Commission did not fully use its power to set preconditions for payment, many of the requirements being too simple (publication of reports – public finance; adoption of legislation – justice). The Commission could have been more stringent when assessing whether conditions had been fulfilled and the granting of additional incentive‐based funds was not fully justified.
Also, the Court criticizes the application of the ‘more for more’ principle. Thus, this considers that the provision of funds as a stimulus for the alleged progress made wasn’t justified. It gave as an example the additional assistance of about €90 million in budget support allocated in 2012-2014. The Court reiterated that financial stimuli were provided even if Moldova wert through an ‘institutional collapse’ in 2013. That year, the Government headed by Vlad Filat was dismissed mainly by the votes of the Democrats and Communists (March 5, 2013) and the country entered a cyclone of successive political crises.
Finally, the Court ascertains that while projects generally delivered the expected outputs, the results were not always sustainable. It refers to the project concerning the capacity of the State Chancellery and the EU High Level Policy Advice Mission to the Republic of Moldova (2010, 2012, 2013 until now).
According to Dionis Cenusa, auditors’ conclusions do not refer to the whole EU support, but some of the identified problems can be considered structural, such as insufficient political will or the EU’s slow reaction to risks associated with the European assistance.
