Most information related to beneficiaries of EU funding under the bloc's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is characterised by "poor usability, failure to comply with the requirements of the regulations and, in a few cases, active defiance of the principles of open government and transparency," heard a 7 May press conference hosted by transparency website farmsubsidy.org.
In March 2008, the European Commission adopted a regulation requiring member states to make public lists of all recipients of EU agricultural subsidies, together with full details of amounts received, by 30 April 2009 (EurActiv 20/03/08).
"In theory, these new rules on transparency should give citizens an excellent new tool to see how their tax money is spent," said the NGO's researchers, but they found that only eight member states were fully complying with the regulations.
Last month, the Commission threatened Germany with infringement proceedings should it fail to publish its list of beneficiaries (EurActiv 24/04/09). Citing data protection concerns, German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner had recommended "temporarily suspending" publication of the information.
Countries 'clearly breaching' law
The researchers also found discrepancies in the type of information provided by the other member states, identifying ten countries as "clearly in breach of the regulations" and a further eight as "likely to be in breach".
The Commission requires publication of the names of recipient companies, their municipalities and the amounts received, but some are not fulfilling all the requirements.
For example, Poland only provided the names of individual applicants rather than the companies they represent. "That is a crazy way to do it," said researcher Nils Mulvad, as it disguises the identities of the companies or "other legal entities that are really making the application, "making it impossible to compile datasets for large recipients, like one country filing applications for several departments signed by several staff members".
'Member states to blame', says Commission
Responding to the NGOs' findings, Kristian Schmidt, deputy head of cabinet for Administration and Anti-Fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas, place the blame squarely at the feet of governments.
"The Commission has published all the data on what it manages itself under the Financial Transparency System: the rest is up to member states," said Schmidt.
The EU official admitted that language difficulties often present an obstacle to meaningful data collation. "The diversity of languages makes it difficult to compile pan-European data. We would of course prefer everything to be in English," he said.
"It is hard to make comparisons between different countries, which is why transparency NGOs like farmsubsidy.org exist," Schmidt added. "But it's not the case that NGOs are now revealing 'secret' information. It's something that the member states agreed to do, but they're not entirely complying," he explained.
'Consistent formats' required
To remedy the situation, farmsubsidy.org called on the Commission to "recommend consistent formats for budget data across all areas of the EU budget" to give member states guidelines.
"Only in this way will it be possible for truly comparable data on EU policies across member states to be provided throughout the Union," it concluded.
Echoing this view, Jana Mittermaier, who heads Transparency International's EU office, said "80% of EU funds are spent under shared mechanisms with member states, and governments are responsible for reporting such cases".
Mittermaier rejected Schmidt's claim that comparative analysis is difficult to conduct. "The system is fragmented and decentralised, but surely there must be the capacity to compile comparative data? What farmsubsidy.org is doing should be done by the Commission. I don't fully buy the argument that it should be left to member states."
Analysis of the 17 countries included in the study showed that just over 700 companies received over a million euros in CAP subsidies in 2008, absorbing 9% of total EU agriculture funding.
Schmidt said the EU executive would now "analyse all the data and work out how to go forward". "Of course, we first have to identify non-compliance, but then we will highlight best practice. We want to focus on success stories, not secret payments," he explained.
Schmidt said the EU executive would publish a White Paper ahead of the publication of a White Paper to review the EU budget "before the end of the year".
