The budgetary control commission of the European Parliament thanked yesterday the collaboration of the Spanish Government with the mission sent in February to Madrid in order to evaluate the execution of the recovery plan and the distribution of Next Generation funds, a program in which Spain " it is at the head of the EU”, according to the draft of the report of conclusions.
The document, prepared by the president of the commission, the German conservative Monika Hohlmeier, also makes several recommendations to Spain and the European Commission to improve the deployment of this aid macroplan, but, unlike what happened before the visit, the The tone of the debate, in which no PP MEP participated, was constructive. "I was very surprised that the ministers took a lot of time to meet with us and I am grateful that Nadia Calviño has declared herself available to continue speaking," Holhmeier said.
In her report, the MEP echoes the complaints heard in Madrid from actors involved in the deployment of the plan about the "complexity" of the tenders, the "excess bureaucracy", the lack of data on the final recipients of the funds (“They are online, but they are difficult to find”) or the need to collaborate more with the autonomous communities.
Also the Commission, addressee of many of the complaints of the PPE, tried to turn the page. "The conclusions seem balanced to me," said his representative, Daclas Costello, who did react to Holhmeier's suggestion that Spain should reduce prior anti-corruption controls in the distribution of funds to allow them to reach the real economy more quickly. since that objective must be combined with the duty to “protect the financial interests of the EU”.
"It seems good to me that the control mechanisms are taken seriously, even if it implies that the execution is a little slower," added Ernest Urtasun (ECP/Greens), who supported some of the recommendations contained in the report, but advised that in the future do not make "value judgments" before doing the mission. “Some of the headlines they generated don't match up with their conclusions,” he lamented. For her part, Eva Potcheva, from Ciudadanos, described the visit as "constructive" and considered the report "balanced", while Isabel García Muñoz (PSOE) lacked that it include "the positive aspects" observed in Spain and asked that it be add to the final version of the report.
