Double funding from the EU budget – Control systems lack essential elements to mitigate the increased risk resulting from the RRF model of financing not linked to costs

Summary:

The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) saw the first ever large‑scale rollout of EU funding with no link to actual costs, which was expected to both deliver results and simplification. In this audit, we assessed the Commission’s and member states’ systems for avoiding double funding between the RRF, on the one hand, and the cohesion policy funds and the Connecting Europe Facility on the other. With unprecedented amounts of EU funding available for the cohesion objectives, we concluded that the use of financing not linked to costs leads to a higher risk of double funding. Considering the weaknesses in the control environment, we found that it is difficult to detect double funding. We make recommendations to help protect the EU’s financial interests.

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