2014-11-14
BRUSSELS - In 2012 we presented a study on investigative journalism in and on Europe at the European Parliament. It had been issued by the Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control. As it turns out, neither the study itself, nor the track it was part of, has lead to anything.
The study, which was executed by Margo Smit on our behalf, looked into the possibility of deterring fraud with EU funds through investigative journalism in the EU-27. It was part of a preparation track of the European Parliament towards a support scheme for investigative journalism. However, after five years and hundreds of thousands of Euros spent on preparation, there is no budget for the support scheme in the 2015 EU budget. Furthermore, on the hard drive of the computer of some Commission officials there is an unpublished feasibility study.
Here’s a summary of the story. (Source: atlatszo.hu)
In 2009 the European Parliament proposed to start a research grant scheme for investigative journalists who plan to investigate cases that affect at least two member states, or the EU as whole. EUR 1.5 million was allocated for this purpose in the EU’s 2010 budget. In 2010 a pilot project defaulted due to an unresolved administrative issue. Then, from 2012 on, the pilot project was turned into a preparatory action and an external consultant was hired for about a quarter of a million euros to figure out how the administrative problem could be solved. The feasibility study was drafted in 2013, yet the Commission felt it could not implement the program in 2014, because the necessary legislation would not go through, they said, due to administrative difficulties. So they didn’t do anything. Now the budget line is missing from the 2015 EU budget for yet another administrative reason: no legislation has been passed to carry the project on to the next phase, and it cannot be continued as a preparatory action, since there is a rule that says that no preparatory action can run for longer than three consecutive years. Quite a strange thing it is to say of a programme which never took off the ground that it has already run too long to be continued. The Commission also has kept saying for more than a year that the administration of the grant scheme would cost too much. They have made this claim on the ground of the feasibility study they ordered in 2012, and was delivered to them, apparently, in October 2013 at the latest, but which they still haven’t published.
Read the full story on atlatszo.hu.
