The European Community Program 2014-2020, which was extended until 2022, is now a thing of the past. Now is the time of reckoning. Brussels will soon reach its conclusions and present them. We have been following the course and development of this program and will be presenting some of the facts regarding projects that have been financed by the European Community Program 2014-2020 below.

Mature projects have been integrated with long delays. For the most part, the institutions, mainly state and local authorities, which had not prepared the necessary technical and economic studies in time and had not obtained the permits required by the current legislation, were responsible. Many bodies, mainly local authorities, imagined that with just a project title and a brief cover letter they would win the coveted funding for a project important to their region and its inhabitants. When they realised their delusion, they discovered that the time had advanced significantly and that the remaining time until the end of the program was simply not enough. Thus, their ambitions remained unfulfilled.

The projects included and financed by the European Community Program 2014-2020 required a standard fulfillment of conditions, but in many of them the content of the actions necessary to be undertaken was precarious and uncertain. Dealing with the problems that arose was at best time-consuming and poorly-coordinated, resulting in additional delays. The Technical Assistance foreseen by the legislation of the European Union, and generously financed by the departments responsible for monitoring the implementation of each project, in practice made little contribution.

In the grid of phases from financing to awarding a contract, although the timeframe had been limited by recent legislation, the increased rights of the tenderers to submit objections prolonged the finalisation of the procedures until the signing of the contracts with the successful bidders.

The main problems, however, concerned the implementation phase of the projects, whether they were technical or societal. The limited possibilities for the timely development of the planned phases, due to the limited human and technical resources of many of the project contractors, resulted in new delays as well as shortcomings in the practical implementation of the contractual obligations of the successful bidders.

In practice, the ability to exercise effective supervision during the execution of the projects was also limited, as was the ability to prevent any deviations from the provisions of the contract articles and timely undo any failures. The relaxed legislation regarding the treatment of any bad workmanship, or, more generally, deviations from the contractual obligations, led to a looser implementation of the content of the contracts, which ultimately resulted in a loose approach to the intended goals for the execution of the projects. In particular, the amortisation of contractual obligations for good performance, and the automatic final acceptance of projects as well performed in a short time, increased the slack during the execution phases.

Finally, the web of deviations from rationality is sealed by the “anguish” of the political heads of the departments or services responsible for promoting Community Programs to show absorption of the relevant credits allocated by the European Union. The absorption of the funds is an apparent reinforcement of these agencies’ political profile, as being active in promoting projects to be implemented. But this is not what society and citizens want. The question is the essential efficiency of the projects, what people call “making the money work”. We believe that this can be achieved if the conditions are created for addressing the problems mentioned above, both at the legislative level and at the level of planning and execution of the projects, by the competent agencies and services. It is a pity that the huge funding from the many European Community Support Frameworks that have been implemented in the country from 1980 until today have produced much smaller results than expected. Improving the efficiency of Εuropean Community funding will also bring about improvements at the qualitative level, since it will significantly limit the corruption and illegal practices that appear prominently in the financial indicators of international rating agencies.

In our region, Mani, the aforementioned pathogens, during the implementation of the few European Community Programs allocated to the region, have a magnified form. The main reason for this is that our region is far away from the control and supervision centers, but also has limited local supervision possibilities. These causes and the limited capacity to draw up public investment proposals in full are responsible for the strong lag of public investment compared with that promoted by the private sector. Let us hope that the local human resources will collaborate and focus their efforts on reversing these negatives in the near future.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

As equal citizens of our state, it goes without saying that the mandate we give to our representatives, elected by universal suffrage, is a mandate to maximise the effectiveness of their political administration. This authority is granted on the condition of broad agreement on the objectives pursued and of minimising the required costs. All this is described extensively and in detail for each area of political activity in the current Constitution. However, these are theoretical obligations that vary considerably in their implementation, mainly due to interference from the human factor, which dilutes the general objectives in favour of individuals or groups that have greater interference in the electoral process. Ultimately, many of these variations from the general goals come to the attention of the electorate, which ultimately elects those most consistent in promoting the common goals and with the lowest management costs. We will describe some of these deviations in more detail below.

Expensive party mechanisms, with their overstaffing and substantial administrative and promotional costs, absorb a significant portion of government spending. Of course, the direct funding of parties from the state was introduced in order to counteract their indirect funding by groups of powerful economic factors who were seeking to promote their own interests by integrating their goals into the general objectives promoted by the government of the day. The extent to which this has been achieved is always a matter to be proven and can only be determined after a detailed examination by citizens of the relevant legislation and its implementation in practice, which is no easy task.

Guilds, in the broad sense of the term, have a strong influence on government decisions, particularly in critical areas linked to everyday life and smooth social living. The privatisation of a large part of the state monopolies has reduced the influence of guilds through mobilisations for strike action, since their interests can no longer be promoted through the state budget and to a certain extent are in conflict with the interests of the new owners of these enterprises. However, the union influences, which ultimately lead to increased costs in the course of the implementation of common goals by governments, have taken another form. They are promoted, to a considerable extent, through informal arrangements between like-minded public and private sector professionals involved in the implementation of policy decisions. It is noteworthy that the present government has chosen ministers in many critical ministries from different professions and backgrounds from the main cadre of the sector. This generally mitigates guild-like choices in the management of state finances, but only at the level of central planning and legislation. A long-term and conscious effort is required to achieve positive management results, generalised down to the last state level, through the elimination of this kind of guild logic.

In particular, the public works sector is one of the most critical areas for the development of the above-mentioned logics, due to the high level of funding for public investment and its complex ramifications. A significant attempt to address side effects in this sector was made in the late 1990s, when major roads were designed and put out to tender. At that time, the political leadership (Souflias, Xanthopoulos) attempted to limit the large number of contracting companies by setting high financial and technological requirements in order for the bidding companies to be recognised and to be able to participate in tenders for large-budget project auctions. Reactions at many levels and from many directions have relativised the initial intentions. However, something important was achieved at the time: the implementation of major projects was linked to their long-term maintenance. Combined with bank financing for the construction companies, the good and safe execution of the projects was ensured through the possibility of control by the technical services of the banks, which were a third party between the contractors and the state, since banking interests forced a squeeze on the cost of long-term maintenance of the projects. From the above we can conclude that the way to eliminate the union influences in the public works sector is through the establishment and implementation of a legislative framework with competitive characteristics that can be applied in practice.

The catalyst for all of the above is the human factor and, in particular, the formation of the personality of citizens through the education system. The frequent lessons on the ancient Greeks should not be only of a verbal and pendantic nature, but they should also be focusing on the model of citizenship that our ancestors attempted to shape. The aim of education in ancient Athens was the formation of the ‘good citizen’. This ideal citizen gathered all the characteristics of Virtue, which according to Plato were wisdom, bravery, prudence, justice and piety, but also many other mental and physical virtues. The formation of the good citizen is also the only way to combat the rationales that lead to guild-like partnerships with weaken public finances.

In our region, Mani, these rationales have a small economic footprint, but because of the sparse population of the area they are very easy to see. Since the beginning of publication of our newspaper MANIOT SOLIDARITY we have been trying to discretely identify them and to contribute towards a solution…

                                                                                                ΤΗΕ ΕDITORIAL BOARD