Completion of restoration works on the Ċittadella in Gozo must be fully funded by the government, a European Commission official said.
However, the same official told this newspaper that, according to EU funding regulations, the €1.1 million that were not spent on the project by the end-of-year deadline were still available to the government. This money, he added, could be used to settle pending bills on other EU-funded projects provided such payments were due by the end of 2015.
Last week, the Times of Malta reported that delays in the Ċittadella project meant the government had not spent all the EU allocated funds, about €11.6 million. By the end of December, the deadline for completion of the works, a total of €10.5 million, or 90 per cent of the funds, had been utilised.
Asked whether the Maltese government would be losing the unutilised €1.1 million, the Commission official said the money could not be given to the government for the Ċittadella project.
“The deadline for eligibility of expenditure under EU co-financed programmes for the period 2007-2013 is December 31, 2015,” he said. “This means that all expenses incurred after this deadline must be covered by national resources.”
However, according to the Commission, a small window of opportunity is open to the government to make use of some of the unutilised funds originally allocated to the Ċittadella on other EU-funded projects.
All expenses incurred after this deadline must be covered by national resources
“If, by the end of last year, a project generated less expenditure than the amount originally allocated to it [namely due to delays in its execution], national authorities [Malta] can allocate the difference to other projects falling within the strategy of the EU co-financed programme in relation to expenditure incurred by the project before December 31, 2015,” the official said.
Asked whether Malta had “definitely lost” some of the EU funds allocated to it and, if so, how much, the official said one would have to wait for some months to establish that – until the final documents were submitted and the auditing done.
“Until the submission of the closure documents, the Commission is not in a position to determine the final amount of EU co-financed programme funding that has been paid to each individual project,” the official said.
Malta was allocated about €1 billion in EU funds for the 2007-2013 period which had to be utilised in hundreds of projects by the end of last year. Sources said that, apart from the Ċittadella and the Coast Road project, which had its allocation cut by €11 million due to irregularities in the tendering process by Transport Malta, there were other large projects at risk of ‘losing’ the full allocation of EU funds due to delays. The government said in December it aimed to make use of about 90 per cent of EU funds by the end of the deadline.
According to the Commission, data shows that, by the end of November, Malta managed to make use of about 81 per cent of its funds.
The Gozo Ministry was asked where the €1.1 million of unutilised EU funds for the Ċittadella had been redirected to but no replies were forthcoming at the time of writing.
On the other hand, Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech said the €11 million of ‘lost’ EU funds on the Coast Road went into educational projects including the procurement of new laptops for teachers and LSAs.