Source: European Parliament
On 14 May 2025, the Members of the Committee on Budgetary Control will vote on the draft opinion to the own-initiative report of the REGI Committee on possibilities for simplification of cohesion funds.
Cohesion policy is the EU’s main investment policy, amounting to almost 1/3 of the EU’s multiannual financial framework(MFF) for 2021-2027. Regrettably, cohesion is one of the spending areas with the highest level of errors: the ECA’s estimated error rate for expenditure from Heading 2 in the financial year 2023 is 9.3%. In his draft opinion, the CONT Rapporteur underlined that simplification should be the guiding principle in cohesion and insisted that simplification should never come at the expense of sound financial management, control or transparency requirements. To ensure this, the Rapporteur has proposed 18 amendments to the REGI draft INI report, including recommendations to invest in the capacity of managing authorities with a view to also strengthening the single audit approach, to introduce further simplification measures for small beneficiaries, and to develop digital and automated systems for reporting, monitoring and audit and ensure their systematic use by Member States.