Posts Tagged Structural Funds

Fish farce

Posted by Stephen Gardner in Environmental armageddon on February 22, 2010

The European Commission has given its backing to a ban in international trade in the severely endangered bluefin tuna. Sort of. In fact, the Commission has said there should be a provisional listing of the bluefin in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, meaning international trade in it would in principle be banned, but the ban should be deferred for one year, giving industry a last chance to put its house in order.

This semi-solution is no great surprise. The Japanese are prepared to pay huge sums for bluefin. There is big money at stake for the industrial fishing concerns and their lobbyists.

In any case, the Commission has been shovelling subsidies in the direction of the bluefin fishing fleets, as I wrote in December in the British magazine Private Eye.

Here is my Private Eye article:

Every Brussels policy edict comes with green edging nowadays. So, when in September Monaco suggested that the best way to conserve the highly endangered and emblematic Atlantic bluefin tuna was to ban international trade in it, the European Commission was quick to lend its support – only to huff and puff when Spain and other Mediterranean countries declined to back it up.

But behind all the talk of sustainability, EU money has been bankrolling the bluefin-decimating fleets. Spanish green MEP Raül Romeva has discovered that the Commission has paid €33.4 million since 2000 to vessels licensed for the bluefin fishery. These boats, many owned by industrial fishing conglomerates, are rather less concerned with conservation than they are with selling at premium prices to the Japanese as much of the giant tuna as possible.

And although the Commission has repeatedly talked about the need to reduce Europe’s fishing-fleet capacity, most of the subsidy has been spent on new vessels that will terrorise any remaining bluefin for years to come. EU money has helped pay for no fewer than 121 boats that participated in the bluefin fishery in 2009, including 15 purse seiners, hated by environmentalists because they indiscriminately scoop up sealife in giant drawstring bags. Meanwhile, scappage payments have been made for just nine vessels. Pass the salt and vinegar!

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Structural funds cashback

Posted by Stephen Gardner in EU Insider on July 16, 2009

The European Commission yesterday (15 July) rather quietly slipped out its 2008 report on protection of the European Communities’ financial interests – in other words an assessment of whether or not the money is going to the places it should be going to. Last year there was a press release and announcements in the midday press conference. This year it was all a bit hush-hush, with a small mid-afternoon briefing attended by just a handful of hacks.

Is there something in there this year they want to hide, I wonder? Well, if so, I haven’t found it yet. The report itself is a digestible 30-page affair, but it is accompanied by two hefty annexes that will take a while to chew through.

Figures on Structural Fund irregularities make interesting reading though. These are sums of money committed to projects by authorities in member states, that later realise they shouldn’t have committed them. This can be for many reasons: incorrect paperwork, projects that later turn out not to be eligible, simple mistakes. “Irregularity” can also cover fraud, though this is only demonstrated in a very small number of cases.

Once member states spot an irregularity they are first required to tell the Commission, then they must get the money back. This is where problems start. Getting the cash back can take time, but if member states fail to recover it within two years, they must pay the money back to the Commission anyway, and the taxpayers of the country in question end up footing the bill.

So one could argue that member states have an interest in declaring a relatively low “irregular” payments amount, so that they are less exposed to losses later on. This certainly seems to be the case with France, which consistently declares unrealistically tiny numbers: for the Structural Funds, €4.6 million in 2007, and €5 million in 2008.

Compare this with 2008 figures for Germany (€20.9 million), the Netherlands (€28.7 million) and Italy (€74.9 million). Either the French are amazingly good at dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on EU-funded projects or there is some under-reporting going on somewhere.

However, if a low number for irregular payments indicates competence on the part of the member state authorities that manage EU funds, then the champions of incompetence must be the British (though of course one can also argue they are most rigorous in declaring irregular payments). In 2007, for Structural Funds, the UK declared €161 million of irregular payments (more or less 10 percent of the UK’s Structural Funds pot for that year). In 2008, the figure was €123 million.

The UK has form for “significantly higher” than normal error rates in Structural Fund payments, especially when it comes to paying authorities in the north of England. Last year, for failings in the north-west of England, around €25 million had to be paid back to the Commission.

Surely there is a case here for some cross-border good practice exchange that will deepen EU integration: send the Mancunians and Liverpudlians to Paris for a bit so they can learn how it should be done!

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