A performance-based EU budget and its focus on real results: The key to sound financial management (own-initiative opinion)

EESC opinion: A performance-based EU budget and its focus on real results: The key to sound financial management (own-initiative opinion)

Key points:

  • There needs to be a thorough analysis and evaluation of where the funds of the EU Budget are spent, how they are spent, how the performance of the funds thus spent is evaluated and how the results achieved are communicated.
  • A prerequisite for boosting the EU budget's performance is the establishment of clearly defined priority objectives for the benefit of EU citizens, corresponding aggregated indicators and a robust reporting system.
  • Some options could be, for example, ex-ante conditionalities, financial instruments, or flexibility and the capacity to cope with unexpected challenges.
  • Not only must EU budget expenditure comply with the rules of legality and regularity, but there must also be a targeted and systematic focus on the results and performance the budget delivers in addressing the EU's priority areas.
  • Any discussion of a performance-based EU budget is also a discussion of EU political priorities.

Having said this, the EESC furthermore :

  • takes the view that a performance culture is not acquired in a single step, but through a process of development;
  • supports further, better and closer integration and linkage  of the Europe 2020 strategy and the 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework (MFF);
  • recommends encouraging Member States to ensure that their partnership agreements and operational programmes include a comparable set of quantifiable results that can be subsequently evaluated;
  • views the forthcoming mid-term revision of the 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework as an opportunity for greater deployment of a performance and results-oriented approach, which should then be fully evident in the shape of the MFF starting in 2021.

Downloads

Article EU Budget - Zahradnik
Article Europost 4.11.2016 - EU Budget