BRATISLAVA, October 6, (WEBNOVINY) — Slovakia could lose about EUR 20 million from sources that the European Union earmarked for projects in informatization of society. The European Commission has frozen drawing the earmarked funds for projects via Operational Program Informatization of Society (OPIS) in the summer of this year. Government Plenipotentiary for Informatization of Society Roland Sill said at a conference of the IT Association of Slovakia on Thursday that if deficiencies that the EC criticized in the program are not eliminated by the end of November of this year, Slovakia will have to finance already running projects from the national state budget.
The European Commission has blocked certification of payments after the government audit detected altogether 55 infringements in OPIS projects with two having been assessed as critical. “The most serious problem was that wrong selection criteria were applied in some projects and certain projects were labeled as ineffective,” stated Sill adding that deficiencies concerned projects launched under the previous government.
Cabinet Plenipotentiary for Knowledge Economy Martin Bruncko said that overpriced projects with low effectiveness of expenditures were approved under the previous government. “Freezing the drawing funds in OPIS is not about us having done something wrong. It is simply the result of the OPIS operation under the government of Robert Fico,“ concluded Bruncko.
Sill continued by saying that deficiencies that the audit detected have been removed and so he expects that Brussels will unfreeze the payments by the end of October. “I am convinced that all deficiencies that the European Commission has pointed out have been eliminated. The allotted funds are expected to be released by the end of the month,” he added.
SITA
