Labour yesterday criticised Malta’s rate of EU funds absorption as the European Commission described the country’s performance in this area as “good” but slower than the EU average.

Replying to a question tabled at the European Parliament by Labour MEP Edward Scicluna, Regional Commissioner Johannes Hahn said Malta was doing well as 80 per cent of its available funds had actually been allocated to specific policies.

However, the Commission said Malta’s record of final payments was slower than the EU average “due to slower implementation of selected projects”.

Under the current seven-year financial period, from 2007 to 2013, Malta negotiated €855 million of EU funds to be spent until the end of 2015.

EU projects are only paid once they are certified as complete. Malta has until the end of 2015 to receive all its committed funds. The bulk of the projects are paid at the end of the programming period.

Replying to earlier questions by the Labour MEP, the Commission had said it had no concerns about Malta and “was convinced that (it) was actually going to achieve its agreed spending targets”.

During a news conference yesterday, Prof. Scicluna questioned why another €600 million were still pending, and highlighted his concerns at the low rate of payments granted to Malta so far, which he calculated as some 33 per cent of the total sum budgeted.

Asked whether he was implic-ating that Malta was doing something wrong in the implement-ation of EU funding, Prof. Scicluna said this was not the case, as civil servants were doing a good job.

“However, we are concerned with the bureaucracy and Mepa permits that might be holding some projects back,” he said.

Replying to Prof. Scicluna’s concerns, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said many of the large projects, which will take most of the pending EU funds, are currently under way.

“I would like to put Prof. Scicluna’s mind at rest as we are making sure that at the current rate we will be able to spend and get all the funds we negotiated.”

As an example, he cited the current storm water relief project which will cost a total of €57 million.

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