European Court of Auditors

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  • Special Report 24/2025: Financial instruments in Cohesion policy (en)

    One of the advantages of financial instruments in cohesion policy over grants is that reflows can be used to support additional final recipients, leading to more efficient use of public financing. Our work concluded that only a limited reuse of reflows materialises during eligibility periods, partly due to acceptable reasons, such as the long‑term nature of investments. After the eligibility period, reflows are generally reused for cohesion policy purposes, but with limitations. We found the legal framework on the reuse obligation insufficiently clear and unambiguous and found a lack of effective oversight by the Commission, leading to varying practices among member states’ managing authorities. We recommend that the Commission and member states aim at maximising the use of reflows for a more efficient use of EU finances.

  • Special Report 23/2025: Municipal waste management (en)

    The aim of EU waste policy is to transition to a circular economy. For municipal waste we concluded that the EU strengthened legal requirements. It set targets for preparing for re‑use and recycling and for limiting landfill. However, many member states struggle with financial constraints, planning weaknesses and problem in implementing their waste management plans, including building new infrastructure. Separate waste collection mostly remains at a very low level, and the waste tariffs that citizens are charged do not cover all waste management costs. We recommend that the Commission should address challenges in the recycling market (making circular economy practices more viable), make better use of monitoring and enforcement tools, and assess the feasibility of harmonising landfill and incineration taxes.

  • Special Report 22/2025: Financial corrections in Cohesion policy (en)

    Financial corrections by the Commission that definitively reduce EU funding to member states are one of the tools to protect the EU budget from irregular expenditure in Cohesion policy. They were expected to become the standard reaction to serious deficiencies. It took over 10 years for the Commission to adopt the first such correction (September 2025), despite each year of the 2014-2020 period being materially affected by error. We found that the legal framework was complex, and not significantly improved for the 2021‑2027 period. There were also shortcomings in its application by the Commission. Moreover, the reporting was insufficiently reliable, including on estimated future corrections that overstate Commission’s capacity to identify and correct errors. We recommend that the Commission applies corrections in line with the legal framework, ensures timely implementation, and improves transparency and accuracy of reporting.

  • Special Report 20/2025: Commission support to fight hunger in sub-Saharan Africa (en)

    We assessed the Commission’s development efforts to combat food insecurity and malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, the Commission has made valuable efforts, but its actions have not always targeted those with the greatest needs and lack sufficient impact and sustainability. The absence of clear criteria for prioritising regions or target groups, coupled with needs exceeding available funds, has constrained the overall impact of interventions. Although coordination has been satisfactory, weaknesses in project design, monitoring, and challenges in addressing root causes of food insecurity have negatively affected the expected sustainability and impact. While EU actions have been aligned with partner countries’ policies, and the Commission’s actions have contributed to progress, significant challenges persist in reducing malnutrition and food insecurity. We put forward recommendations for future action.

  • Special Report 21/2025: RRF support for an improved business environment (en)

    The €650 billion Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) was established in February 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We audited whether RRF measures, in particular reforms, address business environment challenges identified in the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) and achieved the expected results. We found that the RRF partly addresses the business environment challenges with some structural issues remaining unaddressed. While the completed measures have achieved the agreed milestones and targets, so far only one third of them show significant results and contributed to the progress in CSR implementation. We recommend that key challenges are sufficiently covered, a comprehensive framework is put in place to assess results and the contribution of the RRF measures to CSRs, and policy areas are clearly defined and consistently applied across different EU instruments and the European Semester.

  • Review 05/2025: Smart specialisation strategies in the EU (en)

    ​Smart specialisation is an EU policy approach, fully implemented from the 2014-2020 programming period onwards, wherein regions identify investment priorities and focus their EU regional innovation spending on them. The goal is to maximise competitive advantage and to build on the regions’ own economic strengths. This review aims to inform the reader on what smart specialisation is and how it is implemented in the EU. We observed that while most regions find smart specialisation useful, gaps remain when it comes to ensuring priorities are meaningful for the regions themselves, and for the EU’s wider strategic goals. Regions would benefit from more support, there is potential to improve monitoring and evaluation, and more could be done to stimulate the value of interregional co-operation.​

  • Special Report 19/2025: Critical shortages of medicines (en)

    Critical shortages of medicines have become a frequent threat to public health throughout the EU. We assessed EU measures to ensure medicine availability. We conclude that there is not yet an effective framework for critical shortages of medicines. While the European Medicines Agency has provided valuable support to member states, and the Commission has taken initial steps by proposing legislative changes, efforts to tackle the underlying causes of these shortages remain at an early stage. In addition, fragmentation within the single market continues to hinder the availability of medicines across the EU. We recommend that the Commission further improve the system to address critical shortages, launch coordinated action to address root causes and improve the functioning of the single market for medicines.

  • Special Report 17/2025: EU aid for trade to least developed countries (en)

    Developing countries and the world’s least developed countries in particular face significant challenges that hamper their access to regional and global trade. Assistance through aid for trade aims to help them build trade capacity and infrastructure. In 2017, the EU updated its own aid for trade strategy, with increased focus on least developed countries. We examined whether the Commission properly targeted, implemented and monitored EU aid for trade to these countries. We found that while this support is generally being delivered in line with the needs, it is not on track to meet the strategy’s 2030 funding target. We make five recommendations aimed at improving the Commission’s management of EU aid for trade to least developed countries.

  • Special Report 18/2025: EU budget flexibility (en)

    The EU uses long-term budgets, currently covering seven years, known as multiannual financial frameworks (MFFs). This audit focused on the flexibility tools that allow the EU budget to finance additional expenditure in the 2021-2027 MFF. We assessed whether these tools were well designed, and their use justified to avoid running them down excessively during the initial years of the MFF. We found that, despite intensive use, budget flexibility has allowed the EU to respond to a broad range of needs. However, the flexibility framework is too complex, with multiple, sometimes overlapping tools which lack clear prioritisation. We recommend that the Commission better support decision-making for the future design of the flexibility framework, propose its simplification, and improve procedures for examining the alternatives before proposing the use of flexibility tools.

  • Review 04/2025: The Future of EU Cohesion Policy: Drawing lessons from the past (en)

    ​This review provides ideas to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the next cohesion policy period starting in 2028. It brings together results from our published audits, reviews and opinions on different aspects of the implementation of cohesion policy. It compares these findings with our main conclusions on the Recovery and Resilience Facility, where relevant.​

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