The European Court of Auditors has recently published a special report examining whether there are enough tools in place to assess the effectiveness of European Social Fund spending on older workers. The Court noted, “The ESF is a key financial instrument at the disposal of the European Union to assist Member States in the field of employment”. It stressed that the EU has allocated to this fund over € 75 billion, for the 2007-2013 programming period. However, the Court has found shortcomings on the design of the operational programmes, and, particularly, on the monitoring and evaluation systems.
One of the EU’s strategic goals is to increase the employment rate of older workers, nevertheless the Court has found that “neither the Member States nor the Commission are in a position to establish how many older workers have gained new qualifications, or found or kept a job after having benefited from an action funded by the ESF.” Moreover, according to the Court, “the amounts spent on this
kind of action are also unknown.”
Hence, it has concluded that neither the Member States nor the Commission has put in place the tools required to assess the effectiveness of the European Social Fund (ESF) spending on older workers.
According to Lazaros Lazarou, the ECA member responsible for the
report, “The Commission is approving programmes without requiring the information to check if they are really working and the Member States are not providing it.” Moreover, he noted, “Not having reliable, verifiable and timely performance data and assessments of the different actions makes it impossible for the policy makers to draw conclusions for current and future policymaking.”
This report, as previous ECA’s reports, shows that EU funds are not effective in helping to achieve EU policies objectives and reveals that EU taxpayers’ money is not being properly spent. In fact, this is another ECA’s report that shows the EU budget wastes millions of taxpayer’s money.
