Making the best use of EU money Integrity Pacts: A helpful tool or a bottleneck?

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Making the best use of EU moneyIntegrity Pacts
A helpful tool or a bottleneck?

• Georgios Chatzigiagkou (PhD, York)
• Senior Consultant, Logicka Matrica d.o.o

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Risks to good financial management of EU funds

• Funds not accounted for properly in the annual
  financial accounts (reliability of accounts)
• Funds not spent wisely, according to the
  principles of sound financial management
  (economy, efficiency and effectiveness)
• Funds not adding value and expected benefits not
  materialised (EU added value) and
• Funds not spent as intended, for the purposes and
  according to the rules established by the
  budgetary authority (legality and regularity of
  expenditure).

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Improving how EU funds are invested and managed
EC Tools in the 2014-2020 funding period

• Boosting administrative capacity
• TAIEX REGIO PEER 2 PEER exchanges of regional
  experts
• Task Force on Implementation
• Training for experts on rules and regulations on
  two modules
• programming and implementation
• financial management and control issue
• Integrity Pacts

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Integrity Pacts

• A tool for preventing corruption in public
  contracting
• An agreement between the government agency
  offering a contract and the companies bidding for
  it that they will abstain from bribery, collusion
  and other corrupt practices for the extent of the
  contract
• A monitoring system typically led by civil
  society groups

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Integrity Pacts

• A helpful tool or a bottleneck?

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Clarity

• In terms of
• Linkages with existing national and EC-level
  mismanagement, fraud and corruption preventive
  tools and practices in procurement Any synergic
  modalities or parallel tools Need for legal
  formalisation?
• Role and responsibility of each stakeholder A
  further bureaucratic burden in view of limited
  capacities?
• Target funding areas Public Works, Service
  contracts, etc.?
• Application threshold - According to overall
  contract value or nature of contract?
• Impact Administrative, operational, human
  resources, financial
• Communication and Awareness raising

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Piloting

• Selection of a pilot project
• Provision of capacity building (training,
  coaching, guidelines/how-to-notes/, examples and
  international best practices)
• Awareness raising events and tools
• Performance assessment successes and failures
• Feedback and lessons learnt
• Adaptation

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Added Value of Integrity Pacts

• Save taxpayer funds, ensure that EU funded
  projects are delivered efficiently, and stave off
  avenues for illicit gain
• Minimise the risk for Government embarrassment in
  the event of fraudulent use of EU funds
• Create gradually a culture of transparency,
  correct and wise spending and accountability

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Thank you for your attention!

• Georgios Chatzigiagkou, (PhD, York)Senior
  Consultant, Logicka Matrica d.o.o