Members of the European Parliament have successfully passed a measure that would require governments to publish data on the top recipients of funds from the European Union’s €724 billion COVID-19 recovery funds, Politico’s “Brussels Playbook” reported on Wednesday, February 15th.
As the EU is disbursing record amounts of funding in the wake of the pandemic under its NextGenerationEU scheme, it is unclear which companies or individuals are benefitting the most, as national governments have been reluctant to provide information on final beneficiaries.
According to the approved amendment, EU governments will be required to create a “user-friendly public portal containing data on the 100 final recipients receiving the highest amount of funding.” The portal should include the recipient’s full name if they are an individual or the legal name and VAT number if they are a legal entity, as well as the amount received.
Governments initially resisted these transparency requirements, but they agreed to the amendment as part of a larger agreement on the RePowerEU package, which repurposes unused recovery funds for energy investments.
Siegfried Mureşan, an MEP from the center-right EPP, who led negotiations on behalf of the party, hailed the amendment as a significant win for transparency. The new provision would enable journalists, researchers, and citizens to scrutinize where public funds are going. “This new provision is a big win in terms of transparency,” he said. “It would help disclose the actual companies or people receiving the EU funds.”
Eva-Maria Poptcheva from the Renew group said that people should expect that the new requirement may reveal some uncomfortable truths. “My concern is that in many EU countries, the money is not reaching the real economy,” she said. “There are many transfers between administrations, and large multinationals are benefiting, but not small and medium-sized enterprises.”
Poptcheva, who led talks for the law on behalf of Renew, believes that governments will eventually disclose more than just the top 100 beneficiaries—lest it give the impression there are only a handful of beneficiaries. The list of final recipients will be published in April and it will be updated twice a year, the Renew MEP told Politico.
The European Parliament hopes that the transparency requirement will help to ensure that public funds are being used appropriately, and it may reveal any inefficiencies or malfeasance in the distribution of funds. However, it must also be noted that some countries still haven’t received their allocated share of the recovery funds. Due to ongoing disputes over rule of law concerns, the European Commission decided to withhold the money from Poland and Hungary until the countries implement their respective judicial reforms.
