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EU starts a 200 million Euro
ESF refund procedure
Amsterdam, August 2, 2001.
The Dutch Social Affairs Minister Vermeend announced yesterday that the European Commission decided to start a "article 24" procedure over the 1994- 96 ESF subsidy period.
The Dutch government is not able to give full accounts of the subsidy spending according to EU rules.
The total amount of the demanded refund is 203 million Euro over the 1994- 96 period.
The "article 24" procedure gives the Dutch Government a two month period to make its case for a smaller final refund. Minister Vermeend hopes that in this time span the Commission Koning will finish its independent investigation in what is now known as the ESF scandal.
Accountants Report ESF 1994- 96
Minister Vermeend released yesterday also an accountants report on ESF projects in the 1994- 96 period.
The accountants investigated 45 projects in which 5.5 million Euro was involved.
They concluded that only 11 projects were fully accountable. The others were not rightfully accounted or the uncertainty was to big to be able to judge the projects.
In percentage of money spent, 59% of the projects were all right and 41% was unjustly spent or to hard to tell.
On the basis of these figures the accountants concluded that it is statistically not possible to draw conclusions about the total amount of the 1.5 billion Euro of ESF subsidies spent. A further investigation is therefore needed.
But they conclude that more investigations are not possible due to missing project archives. They advise Minister Vermeend to use their present findings in the financial negotiations with the Commission.
Refund provision in Spring Balance
In its annual spring balance (Voorjaars nota 2001) the Dutch government raised the ESF refund provision with 225 million Euro for the 1994- 2000 period, according to a letter of june 19 to parliament of Minister Vermeend.
In the same letter Minister Vermeend announced that the estimated ESF funds for the 2000- 2006 period are expected to be 56 million Euro lower than previously thought. His Ministry will compensate the "under funding" with the same amount.
According to a news article in the
NRC- Handelsblad
this indicates that up until recently the Dutch government regarded the ESF funds as a generic way to finance the Labour Agency (Arbeidsvoorziening, Arbvo).
EU ESF rules prohibit this way of financing. ESF funds are only available for concrete projects in the field of unemployment.
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