It is not up to the European Union to
check Italian projects for fraud, Economic Affairs Commissioner
Paolo Gentiloni told La Stampa editor Massimo Giannini Thursday
after the latter asked him about the government's decision to
strip Italy's Audit Court of its 'concomitant' oversight powers
on the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), leaving it
only able to review the projects once they are complete.
"It is up to the control systems of the various countries, and
Italy has very good ones, to control fraud, corruption, double
spending of the various European funds. We cannot control this
from Brussels for 27 countries. There are the authorities in
charge in the individual countries. I think this is already
clear to everyone, it is certainly clear to the Italian
government. The European Parliament asks the Commission to go
and check investment by investment who will be the beneficiaries
of the NRRP funds, we cannot do that," the former Italian
premier told Giannini.
"There are hundreds of thousands of final beneficiaries of the
projects. If they are bad, if there is fraud, the national
governments will check it," he said.
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