Malta had one of the lowest take-up rates of EU agricultural funds in the 2007 to 2013 programme, according to a report by the European Court of Auditors.
The report released yesterday listed Malta among nine member states as having the lowest “financial execution rate” of an EU budget that totalled €150 billion.
Malta’s allocation under the programme was €77,653,355 over seven years, amounting to some €10 million per year. The share funded out of national coffers amounted to nearly €24 million.
The government’s report on the allocation prepared last June states that 67 per cent of the allocation had been claimed from the European Commission. In total, the amount claimed until then was just over €57 million.
The remaining balance that Malta still had to claim was just over €20 million. Malta’s report states, however, that almost 96 per cent had been “committed”. This is not reflected in the court of auditors’ report.
Entitled ‘Errors in rural development spending: what are the causes, and how are they being addressed?’, the report describes the main causes of the high “error rate” (irregular transactions) for rural development.
Rural development expenditure is implemented by shared management between member states and the Commission. Member states are responsible for implementing the rural development programmes at the territorial level and the Commission supervises them to ensure they fulfil their responsibilities.
The court of auditors criticised the use of funds, saying control systems in member states were deficient because checks were not exhaustive and were based on insufficient information.
The report refers to a specific case in Malta, in which a farmer undertook to refrain from cultivating crops on a strip measuring a minimum of one metre along fences and to leave this area uncultivated, unploughed, unfertilised and unsprayed. The commitment was aimed at conserving biodiversity.But the court found that the beneficiary did not comply with this obligation on any of the parcels of land subject to this commitment.
The Sunday Times of Malta published a series of articles on this funding stream, focusing on specific measures to aid investment in the upgrading of farms.
It revealed that nine contracts amounting to more than €1 million in EU agricultural funds had been signed in the week before the last general election.
Meanwhile, a number of farmers spoke to this newspaper, saying they had been promised funds that were never given.
One farmer in Mosta described how his family was being torn apart by the pressure after massive loans had been taken out based on the government commitment. The family was struggling to pay back the interest on the loans.
Meanwhile, EU funds parliamentary secretary Ian Borg has centralised the process of funds allocation. Anybody on the waiting list is unlikely to see a cent.