Finland fails to qualify for part of EU funding

Insufficient vetting of participants may mean government has to finance shortfall

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Finland has failed to qualify for part of the EU financing to be covered by the European Social Fund (ESF) in the programming period 2000 to 2006, as not all participants in the ESF projects have been living or working in the project region.
      For example, a Turku resident is not entitled to ESF funding in the Kainuu region.
      Actually, the participants in the Finnish ESF training have not been examined carefully enough, and hence some trainees in the ESF-funded projects have come from the wrong regions. This is not acceptable to the European Commission.
      The disqualified funds amount to approximately EUR 2.4 million in the programming period 2000 to 2006. However, the final sum will be determined only after all projects involving ineligible costs have been implemented.
     
The qualifications for the ESF financed training were issued at the beginning of the programming period, and in 2004 the Commission specified the directives further. According to the Commission, only those applicants who live or work in the project region are eligible for the project funding.
      At that point Finland launched its own inquiry into the projects potentially not eligible for ESF support.
     
Ineligible costs have been found in the projects of several ministries, including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, and the Ministry of the Interior.
      The largest number of disqualified projects have been detected in the Ministry of Education sector, with the Ministry of Labour coming next. For example, around 10 per cent of the nearly 3,000 ESF projects involved a number of students from a wrong region.
      "However, the students will not be affected, as the training will not be interrupted", says Special Government Advisor Merja Niemi from the Ministry of Education. This implies that the Finnish government will have to find the missing amount in the supplementary budget.
     
There have been problems with respect to ESF projects on earlier occasions, too. For example, the payments regarding the ESF funding for Northern Finland were frozen for the period of the spring through summer, as the European Commission did not regard the Finnish monitoring system of ESF projects as reliable.


Links:
  European Social Fund (ESF)
  European Social Fund in Finland
  Ministry of Education
  Ministry of Trade and Industry
  Ministry of Social Affairs and Health
  Ministry of the Interior
  Ministry of Labour

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