7th meeting of the Joint Monitoring Committee 2022-12-30, Category: Programme news

During the last meeting of the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) of the Cross-border Cooperation Programme 2014-2020, which was held on 7 December 2022, the following decisions were made following the Russian military aggression against Ukraine:

• to decrease the maximum European Union’s co-financing for the Russian partners to the level of pre-financing already paid;
• to deem the amounts due to Russian partners (covering the expenditure incurred and paid before 24^th February 2022), which cannot be paid due to the Financing Agreement’s suspension, ineligible;
• to use the 100% co-financing mechanism for expenditure included in the annual accounts for the accounting years starting 1^st July 2021, 1^st July 2022 and 1^st July 2023 respectively in accordance with article 3 of the Regulation (EU) 2022/2192  of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9^th November 2022 laying down specific provisions for the 2014-2020 cooperation programmes supported by the European Neighbourhood Instrument and under the European territorial cooperation goal, following programme implementation disruption;
• to implement by the Managing Authority a simplified recovery procedure directly from partners based on article 14 of the Regulation (EU) 2022/2192;
• considering the closure of the financial year 2020/2021 and the lack of audits on the Russian side (before the Russian aggression against Ukraine) concerning expenditure in the amount
  of 559 342,24 EUR of the European Union’s contribution, the JMC considers the above-mentioned expenditure to be ineligible and authorizes the Managing Authority to carry out the procedure for recovering the above-mentioned amount from beneficiaries, and in the event of ineffective recovery – to deduct them from the Russian funds account;
• the JMC authorizes the Managing Authority to deduct amounts arising from irregularities or sums unduly or excessively paid to the Russian beneficiaries from the Russian funds account.

Moreover, as confirmed by the European Commission, the possibility of using a simplified recovery procedure can be also used concerning European Union’s funds that were already paid to the Russian beneficiaries and have not been a subject of project’s audit (i.e. audit of operations). The Managing Authority has a possibility to offset due amount against the Russian contribution to the Programme.

The Commission also highlighted that no expenditure may be accepted from the Russian partners, even from before the cut-off date (i.e. before 24^th February 2022), if it was not fully controlled and audited.