Limitation Period for Irregular Payments from the EU Budget and NextGenerationEU Funds in the Post-Covid Era

Abstract

In the EU, as in life, money is a motivator for change. On the one hand, the funds regularly allocated to Member States from the EU budget finance diverse activities, ranging from rural development and environmental protection, investments supporting sustainable economic development and new technologies, to the protection of external borders and the promotion of human rights. On the other hand, the extraordinary financial assistance provided by the EU to Member States from the NextGenerationEU should help their economies and societies to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, and more recently from the effects of the war in Ukraine. In contrast, the threat of suspending or losing funds from the EU budget and the NextGenerationEU is aimed at urging Member States, and in particular Hungary and Poland, to respect the rule of law. In an ideal world, EU money goes to the right recipients, meets properly identified and legitimate objectives, and is spent lawfully. In the real world, EU funds are sometimes spent incorrectly, with the result that under EU rules they must be recovered from those responsible for infringements, and in some cases sanctions must also be imposed on them. It is only in exceptional cases that irregular expenditures of EU funds may not be recovered and sanctioned. This is the case, inter alia, when a legally defined period has elapsed since the irregular expenditure was made, ie, the irregularity is time-barred. The limitation period for irregular payments means that the offender is exempt from the obligation to repay the EU funds irregularly spent to the EU budget and cannot be sanctioned. This article analyses EU legislation governing the statute of limitations for irregular expenditures paid from the EU budget and NextGenerationEU. Its aim is to determine whether these provisions provided effective protection for these funds during the COVID pandemic, as well as now in the post-COVID era.