MORE TRUST or MORE CONTROL?

Posted by Ivo Bezecný. On Monday 19th of March the European Commission kicked off the Communication campaign aimed at avoiding financial errors in FP7 projects. Now we are approaching the years when a lot of projects financed under FP7 will be finished and audited. Results of the audits will be very important for all the science community because they will be taken into account by the Commission in preparing budget and financial rules for the new financing program Horizon 2020.
Commission says it clear. Value for money in research funding must balance two sides – excellent science results and financial accountability. Both of them are of the same importance in new budget preparation and in dealing with a possible financial rules simplification. If there are financial errors in cost reimbursements the scope for going on in simplification process will be limited. On the other hand error-free reimbursements may open a new room for some simplifications making the live easier both for researchers and financial managers.
How does it look with errors now? Dependent on a specific program the rate of errors fluctuate between 2 and 5%. The Commission´s target is to achieve 2%. If it is fulfilled it does make sense to push for more money and next simplification of the rules. However, in average the percentage of errors is about 3,5% and this is a rate not acceptable for European Parliament.
How to achieve a 2% errors rate? From point of view of the Commission there are three possible ways:
1)      To observe guidelines and regulations – the Commission does its best in training people to understand the rules.
2)      Simplification of funding rules – it has side effect : MORE ERRORS. Again – less errors means less controls and we are less bothered by administrative demands. Less errors means accepting different control strategy including less audits.
3)      More and more audits and recoveries
The Commission is pushing for more money for research and next financial rules simplifications. However, now there is a ball on our side. We must support Commission´s claims towards European Parliament with error-free audit reports, our cost reimbursement forms must include only eligible cost connected with the approved activities. Sometimes it is not easy and mistakes are happening. The Commission is trying hard to help us in avoiding errors. For this reason the communication campaign has started and it will go on in most of EU regions in co-operation with national contact points. The campaign aims at drawing our attention to the most common errors and at finding way how to avoid them.
At the same time the Commission has published the paper “Note for beneficiaries in the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation – How to avoid common errors identified in cost claimes”. The paper is included and highly recommended for reading.
If we are successful not only as far as research output is concerned but also with our reimbursement claims we can look forward to receiving more money for research activities and simpler rules for their reimbursement.