Governments have adopted laws and launched digital services with EU recovery money, but auditors found that these changes often fell short of their aims. Only five of 14 measures examined closely produced the expected improvements. The European Commission says reforms need time and argues that the findings do not capture their full impact.
“The RRF could have been used more strategically to make public administrations in the member states stronger,” said Ivana Maletić, the European Court of Auditors member leading the audit published in late October. Countries allocated €49.1bn from the pandemic Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to public administration. The disagreement concerns what that investment delivered beyond completed projects and new legislation.
What counts as an improvement?
The auditors examined 14 completed measures in Czechia, Germany, Greece, and Spain. Five produced results broadly matching their aims, eight fell well short, and one lacked evidence of results. All had delivered their agreed outputs: the laws, strategies, or systems that governments had promised. The question was whether those changes also improved how public administration worked.
(Money) could have been used more strategically to make public administrations in the member states stronger.
— Ivana Maletić, auditor
Spain provided a positive example. Its modernisation programme included a single access point for citizens dealing with public administration and 14 public-service apps with 7.4m users. These gave auditors evidence that people were using the services, beyond confirmation that the technology existed.
A Czech public-procurement reform showed the difference between adopting a strategy and achieving its aims. It sought stronger competition, better opportunities for smaller firms, and less reliance on the lowest price when awarding contracts. An evaluation nevertheless found limited improvements across the measured areas. For businesses, the promised change concerned their chances of winning public contracts; for taxpayers, it concerned how authorities chose suppliers.
Other projects lacked the information needed to judge their benefits. A Czech investment in digital construction permitting had no national indicator showing whether it shortened the process. Auditors suggested measuring waiting times and applications completed entirely online. Without that information, a functioning portal cannot establish whether someone seeking permission to build faces fewer delays.
Commission defends payments for delivering reforms
The Commission argues that the audit captures reforms before their full effects can be measured. “Many public administration reforms are structural by nature and take time to generate measurable effects,” it said in its written response, shared with EU Perspectives. It also points to Russia’s war against Ukraine, inflation, the energy crisis, and supply-chain disruption as obstacles during implementation.
Its defence rests partly on what governments can control. “For example, the availability of an online public service can be measured directly, but its uptake depends partly on citizens’ behaviour,” the Commission said. It therefore considers indicators tracking completed reforms and investments an appropriate basis for payments, even when improvements in everyday life take longer to emerge.
Many public administration reforms are structural by nature and take time to generate measurable effects.
— European Commission
That explains how countries can meet funding conditions while auditors remain dissatisfied with the benefits. The payment system checks agreed milestones and targets, such as adopting legislation or launching a service. The Commission also stresses that countries were not legally required to solve every administrative problem identified by the EU. “It did not require full coverage of every recommendation, nor did it specifically require Member States to focus on public administration,” its response states.
Completion over effectiveness?
The auditors’ criticism goes beyond missing statistics. Governments favoured digital projects that could be delivered relatively quickly, while deeper problems involving staffing, coordination, and governance received less attention. That can leave citizens with a new way to submit an application while the institutions processing it retain longstanding weaknesses. Only 14% of the governance-related recommendations examined were largely addressed.
The same problem now feeds into negotiations over the 2028–2034 EU budget. Auditors warn that proposed monitoring rules only partly address these weaknesses. The Commission says its framework would improve oversight while reducing reporting burdens, but stresses that Parliament and the Council must negotiate the final rules. Those rules will help determine whether future payments reward a completed project alone or also require evidence that public services have improved.
