Setting up a database to assess impacts and effects of certain thresholds and limits in Regulation (EU) No 1303/2013 (CPR) : executive summary

The use of European Structural and Investment (ESI) Funds plays an important role in helping the Member States of the EU (MS) achieve the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. In order to ensure that operations co-financed by the ESI Funds are implemented in accordance with the principles of sound financial management, EU Regulations set out minimum requirements for reporting and efficient management and control systems. These include rules on management verifications and audit and inter alia require Managing Authorities (MAs) and beneficiaries to record multiple pieces of information for each operation. However, the act of complying with these control and reporting systems understandably implies costs for MAs and beneficiaries, as it entails performing administrative tasks. The legislative framework applicable to ESI Funds for the 2014-2020 period emphasises the principle of proportionality and the necessity to reduce administrative costs and burdens placed upon MAs and, in particular, beneficiaries. In line with the principle of proportionality, the Common Provisions Regulation (CPR) establishes several new limits and thresholds in order to reduce administrative costs and burden in relation to monitoring, reporting, evaluation, management, and control. A number of these are linked to the financial volume of operations. Given that the Commission only had access to aggregate data at the priority axis level of the Operational Programmes (OP), it was very difficult to assess the potential effects of thresholds with a view to reduce administrative costs and burden. Therefore, DG REGIO sought to address this limitation by developing a representative and comprehensive database for all the operations financed by the ERDF and CF in the 2007-2013 period. This database was then used to produce simulations on the impact of six specified thresholds in order to assess whether these will help contribute to the reduction of the administrative burden and costs related to the support from ESIF.