Czech Business Today

The topic of EU Budget performance and result orientation has recently become a very strong and visible issue and one of the keys and most accented priorities of the EU economic policy. With the new Juncker European Commission, established in November 2014, and especially thanks to its Vice-President for Budget Kristalina Georgieva, the focus on results and impacts of EU budgetary expenditures has substantially strengthened.

Also, a fragile balance regarding the budgetary performance has been reached in the Council. The 2014 Commission discharge being prepared by the European Parliament follows this trend too, currently very much in line with the current Dutch Council Presidency. And finally, also the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has approved an agenda on this issue where this article ́s author is going to be a rapporteur of his own initiative opinion. What is the matter? So far, the EU Budget has been viewed mostly from the formal legality and regularity aspects and the real impacts of supported activities have been observed quite insufficiently. Nobody politically relevant tested the EU Budget expenditure policy in terms of its contribution to the real economic performance and not even with the other EU economic policies (whose paradigm has radically changed in 2009–2014). European institutions, especially the Commission, have enormous numbers of primary data at their disposal that are not used to contribute to the performance-based EU Budget. What to do to make the EU Budget more effective in the future? It is suitable to follow the principles of sound financial management, respecting the performance culture environment. Performance-based EU Budget means an adequate focus of its expenditures on real EU priorities for the particular period tested through their contribution to the EU value-added. It needs to create a strategy, to support its simplification and flexibility (based on economic reality).

It is also connected with the focus on financial return and therefore on a more intensive utilization of innovative financial instruments. Big changes are realistically feasible for the period after 2020. It should be about a synergy not only among the particular EU Budget ́s headings but also with other sources mobilized, for example, by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). This synergy could consequently lead to a new concept of EU Budget after 2020, consisting of a similar model for cohesion, competitiveness and agricultural actions.

Petr Zahradník,
EESC Member, Group I – Employers