Pre-accession assistance to Turkey has been funding, since 2002, the implementation of projects meant to support Turkey to meet the conditions and undertake the necessary reforms required for accession to the EU. On 13 the January, the European Court of Auditors presented its special report on “The European Commission’s management of pre-accession assistance to Turkey.” The Court has assessed the efficiency and effectiveness of two different assistance programmes: Turkey Pre-accession Assistance (TPA) and the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA).
The TPA ran from 2000 until the end of 2006 and it was replaced in 2007 by IPA which will run till 2013. The annual budgets under TPA have increased through the years, for instance the budget in 2002 was 126 million euros whereas in 2006 it was 463 million euros. The IPA for Turkey has a budget allocation of 4.873 million euro for the 2007-2013 period. The pre-accession assistance was managed in both programmes and periods, under the Decentralised Implementation System (DIS) which entails the transfer of project management responsibility (tendering, contracting and payment) to the authorities in Turkey under the supervision of the European Commission.
The Court examined whether the EU funds provided to Turkey have been effectively managed by the Commission. The European auditors focused, particularly, on the design of the annual National Programmes, the system for programming new projects, and the effective functioning of the Decentralised Implementation system.
According to the Court the first pre -accession assistance period has suffered “(…) excessive delays, implementation problems, inadequate monitoring and evaluation.” The Court pointed out that the Commission has introduced several measures in order to address the abovementioned weaknesses, particularly in the framework of the new instrument for pre-accession assistance (IPA). Although the Court has noted some improvements, mainly in the project selection process, further improvements are still required. Nevertheless, the Court may only assess the full impact of these measures when the IPA projects are implemented in few years time.
The Court pointed out that “The Financial Regulation requires SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) objectives to be established for all policy measures covered by the EU budget.” Although such objectives should be set out in annual activity statements, the Commission did not include them in the activity statements for pre-accession expenditure in Turkey.
The Court recall that the 2006 Accession Partnership had established 236 priorities for Turkey to meet the acquis requirements however “There was no indication of the relative importance of the priorities listed” as “the only differentiation was in their timescale.”
The Commission introduced, in 2007, a Multi -annual Indicative Planning Document (MIPD) aimed at setting the main priorities that should be addressed with the IPA funds. Although the Court recognized that such a document “has potential to better direct EU funding” it noted that “the MIPD did not define the objectives for EU funding in a more specific, measurable or achievable manner than the Accession Partnership.” The Court found that “the council and commission strategy documents were insufficient in directing the EU assistance towards an achievable set of objectives within the pre-accession process.” The Court, therefore, concluded that “there was insufficient direction and a lack of specific criteria to determine the priorities to which the EU assistance should be allocated” as “Specific and measurable objectives for that assistance were not set and the timescales to achieve those objectives were not realistic.”
Moreover, the Court stressed the lack of mechanism to guarantee that the projects selected “were those that represented the best use of EU financial resources in achieving the Accession Partnership priorities.”
As regards the TPA project selection process, the Court found that it “(…) was not sufficiently guided by the Accession Partnership priorities.” In fact, the majority of the projects “did not directly address Accession Partnership priorities.”
Moreover, the report points out that the project description, the so called project fiche, should include the objectives of the project, “expected results and objectively verifiable indicators as well as implementation milestones.” According to the Court, the “the project fiches provided the basis of a performance monitoring system”, however the majority of the projects had neither SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) objectives nor RACER (Relevant, Accepted, Credible, Easy, and Robust) performance indicators. The indicators provided were insufficient to measure the achievement of the project objectives. There were no SMART project objectives and indicators, consequently the Commission was not able to show the level of project management success in achieving objectives.
Furthermore, the Commission has not sufficiently considered the TPA project feasibility.
The Court noted that the Commission has introduced new measures to select projects which were applied to the project selection process for the 2007 national programme nevertheless “there was still room for improvement in their application.” The Court has stressed that, in 2007, project proposals continued not being assessed for how effective and efficient they were likely to be in achieving an objective.
The European Court of Auditors also assessed whether the Decentralised Implementations System (DIS) effectively managed the projects from the 2002–04 national programmes. In 2003 the European Commission transferred its contracting authority to the Turkish government. The Turkish structures which form an integral part of the system are: the National Aid Coordinator, Central Finance and Contract Unit, National Fund. The Court noted that the DIS had not enough qualified and trained staff to process the volume of budget and projects adopted in the 2002–04 National Programmes, nevertheless, the Commission deemed as satisfactory the capacity of the DIS structure and staffing and approved the DIS implementation of the TPA on this basis.
The Court found that the DIS did not attain timely implementation for the majority of the projects audited. Taking into account the problems that arose from low staffing levels at Central Finance and Contract Unit, the delays during tendering and contracting, the Commission has introduced different measures but the Court could not assess yet their impact. Nevertheless, the Court found that the projects have achieved their intended outputs despite the “weaknesses in the project design and selection phase and from the delays experienced during tendering and contracting” and their results “are likely to be sustained.” The report states that “This is to a great extent due to the high level of commitment shown by the Turkish authorities.”
As regards performance monitoring and evaluation, the European auditors assessed whether the Commission had a sound base to review the project’s implementation and evaluate the achievement of project objectives as well as the impact of EU fund in achieving Accession Partnership priorities. The Court noted that “The DIS monitored whether projects were on track through regular meetings and monitoring reports.” The CFCU is required to produce a monthly report on tendering, contracting and payment to the EC Delegation and to the Commission’s Finance Unit. Although implementation problems were identified the Court noted that “some important issues were not documented.” According to the Court several significant delays and problems in project implementation were not mentioned in the DIS´s project monitoring reports. Moreover, the Court noted the lack of monitoring progress against the targets set up in each project fiche for the different phases of project implementation. Furthermore, the annual interim evaluation reports did not provide any assessment of the finished projects. The Court stressed that “there was a lack of complete, reliable and timely management information for scheduling the CFCU annual work load, to minimise bottlenecks and backlogs and to allow rapid intervention where milestones were not being met.”
According to the Court “The Commission did not have sufficient information to demonstrate the effectiveness of the pre-accession assistance as there was not a sound basis for monitoring performance, including value for money.”
The Court has concluded that “In the six years of EU pre-accession assistance to Turkey, there has been no system of ex post evaluation of individual projects or of the effectiveness of the programme as a whole in terms of meeting the Accession Partnership priorities and of progressing Turkey towards EU accession.”
