The Slovak government received an inspection report on February 10 prepared by the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ) on drawing EU funds in 2009. The audit of 211 Slovak public entities using EU funds revealed 1,021 mistakes, the TASR newswire wrote. These mistakes were of various types, from formal imperfections to systematic flaws that could have a negative impact on the efficiency of drawing EU funds allocated to Slovakia.
NKÚ carried out its inspection at ministries, implementation agencies, regions, towns, villages and a number of other legal entities. The audit was mainly focused on control processes, use of public resources and compliance with the Act on Public Procurement. According to analyses on drawing European structural funds in 2004-2006, Slovakia had €1.17 billion at its disposal, with the European Fund for Regional Development being the most used.
In 2004-2005, Slovakia failed to draw €9.4 million, an amount which is “definitely lost”, said NKÚ. For 2007-2013, Slovakia has €11.36 billion at its disposal via the structural funds and the Cohesion Fund for financing 11 operational programmes. Some €520 million has been drawn from these funds over the course of three years so far, amounting to only 4.59 percent of the total, said NKU. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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