Cohesion And Fisheries Policies

• Year: 2022

COHESION AND FISHERIES

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4. COHESION AND FISHERIES POLICIES

4.1. Introduction

Section 4 presents a statistical evaluation of irregularities and fraud detected by the Member

States during 2022, with reference to the cohesion and fishery policies. It places these

detections in the context of past years and relevant programming periods.

Expenditure under the cohesion and fisheries policies is disbursed by the Member States

under shared management. The Member States must report irregularities and cases of fraud to

the Commission through the Irregularity Management System (IMS). When reference is

made to fraud, this includes both suspected and established fraud.

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Non-fraudulent

irregularities must be reported only when they are detected after the expenditure has been

introduced in a statement submitted to the Commission. Both fraudulent and non-fraudulent

irregularities must be reported only when involving financial amounts above

EUR 10 000. Several Member States also reported some irregularities under this threshold.

4.2. General trend

Fraudulent irregularities related to programming period (PP) 2007-2013 peaked in 2015,

gradually decreased in the following years and in 2018 they were overtaken by those related

to PP 2014-2020 (see Table CP1 below). These dynamics are in line with known trends and

patterns in the detection and reporting of irregularities and are linked to the PP 2007-2013

and PP 2014-2020 implementation cycles.

For PP 2014-2020, the financial amounts experienced two extreme peaks at

EUR 660 million, in 2018, and at EUR 540 million, in 2021 (see Table CP2 below). In 2018,

this was due to two ERDF irregularities reported by Slovakia, accounting together for

EUR 590 million. In 2021, the peak was mainly due to one ERDF irregularity reported by

Romania, accounting for about EUR 280 million and one CF irregularity reported by

Slovakia, accounting for about EUR 120 million.

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See footnote 19.

2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

N N N N N N

Programming period 2014-20 161 101 229 182 175 848

CF 23 124 910 67

ERDF 94 68 142 131 100 535

ESF 33 23 59 38 55 208

EMFF 11 9 4 4 10 38

Programming period 2007-13 117 70 46 51 30 314

CF 2 6 4 5 1 18

ERDF 95 40 37 30 21 223

ESF 20 18 412 054

EFF 0 6 1 4 8 19

Programming period 2000-06 2 0 0 0 1 3

ERDF 2 0 0 0 1 3

TOTAL EU27 280 171 275 233 206 1,165

UK 3 3 4 1 0 11

Table CP1: Number of irregularities reported as fraudulent between 2018 and 2022 by programming

period - Cohesion and fisheries policies

FUND / PROGRAMMING PERIOD

REPORTING YEAR

TOTAL

PERIOD