The European Union provides every year 300 millions euros to Palestine destined to intervene in the sectors of instruction, health and jobs but not all of these funds arrive at destination, according EU officials who spoke Wednesday in Strasbourg during a debate on EU funds for the Middle East, in the European Parliament delegation for relations with Israel.
According to Michael Doherty, of the European Commission’s development unit, the EU keeps on paying salaries to workers who in reality do not work at all, confirming a report of the European Court of Auditors, the Luxembourg-based EU watchdog, in December 2013, revealing major dysfunctions in the management of EU financial support to the Palestinian Authority and calling for a serious overhaul of the funding mechanism.
"We are speaking of millions euros projects that see part of their funds going to individuals who in reality should not receive a euro," deplored Italian MEP Fulvio Martusciello, who chairs the EP-Israel delegation, during the meeting.
"Such reflections were not only made by the representative of the European Commission but also by Hans Gustaf Wessberg, a member of the European Court of Auditors who intervened during the meeting with the Delegation,’’ the EPP parliamentarian emphasized.
‘’The money we are transferring is coming from European citizens and for this reason we have to operate an accurate control on them,’’ Martusciello concluded.
In its 2013 report, the EU Court of Auditors revealed that, since 2007, "a considerable number" of Palestinian Authority civil servants in Gaza have received their salaries partly funded through EU aid—even though they "were not going to work due to the political situation in Gaza."
The court also criticized the absence of any conditions for EU aid to the Palestinian Authority, an approach that reduces the potential leverage of the EU to push for more reforms from the Palestinian Authority.
The court also found that the EU paid insufficient attention to the fungibility of the funds it provided to the Palestinian Authority. There is reason to believe that EU financial assistance has allowed the Palestinian Authority to use its own general budget to support terrorist or criminal activities.
The Palestinian Authority, for example, allocates a significant portion of its budget to paying salaries to Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism offenses.
These salaries are up to five times higher than the average salary in the West Bank. Prisoners also receive large grants from the Palestinian Authority. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, in 2012 the Palestinian Authority's payments to convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons and to the families of deceased terrorists (including suicide bombers) together accounted for more than 16% of the annual foreign donations and grants to the budget of the Palestinian Authority. Last year, the Palestinian minister for prisoners' affairs announced that €30 million will be allocated to current or former prisoners in 2014.
Since the 1994 Oslo Agreement, which created the Palestinian Authority, the EU has offered financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority to help advance a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis. The EU is today the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority, which relies mainly on foreign donations.
European lawmakers have a duty to ensure that EU funds aren't diverted from the noble purpose for which they're intended and channeled to terrorist organisations.