New assessment of ESIF administrative costs and burden

Summary:

The study established a new baseline concerning the administrative costs and burden of the current ESIF programming period, with a common approach for all five ESI Funds.

Although managing and implementing ESIF programmes is a highly complex and demanding task, the overall administrative costs are judged to be reasonable. Given that transparent and responsible handling of public money and ensuring high-quality investments requires the commitment of considerable administrative resources, 4% of administrative costs (average aggregated costs, taking into account the weighted allocation of Funds) that are some 26 billion EUR or 610 000 FTE over a programming period handling 646 billion EUR are not considered excessive. This corresponds to 40 300 EUR respectively 0.95 person years per million Euro of eligible budget including national co-financing. These costs are also consistent with the volume of support granted under technical assistance.

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