The Commission and the Member States share the
responsibility to counter fraud and any other illegal
activities affecting the EU’s financial interests. In the field of
EU cohesion policy, where there is a significant incidence of
reported fraud compared to other spending areas, the
bodies in the front line of the fight against fraud are the
Member State authorities responsible for managing EU
programmes.
In this audit, we assessed whether managing authorities
have properly fulfilled their responsibilities at each stage of
the anti-fraud management process: fraud prevention,
fraud detection and fraud response.
We found that managing authorities have improved the
way they assess fraud risks and design preventive measures,
but they still need to strengthen fraud detection, response
and coordination among different Member State bodies. In
particular, they have made no significant progress towards
proactive fraud detection and the use of data analytics
tools. Managing authorities under-report fraud cases to the
Commission, which affects the reliability of published fraud
detection rates. Deterrence is limited to the threat of
withdrawing EU funding, with no other dissuasive penalties
or sanctions. Moreover, suspicions of fraud are not
systematically communicated to investigation or
prosecution bodies.