An in-depth audit by the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic has highlighted errors in the Business and Innovations for Competitiveness Operational Programme (hereinafter “OP PIK”), whose managing authority is the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic (hereinafter the “MoIT”).
The situation has been reported by the MoIT to the national managing authority (the Ministry of Regional Development) and the European Commission, with which it is addressing the situation. Following the notice, the European Commission conducted an audit of the Operational Programme, identifying an exceptionally high – 14% – error rate in drawing subsidies, with the tolerated limit at a mere 5%. Therefore, the European Commission has decided to suspend the OP PIK certification, discontinuing the payment of funds for several months.
The suspension of OP PIK will not affect the payment of funds to approved projects in any way, with the funding covered by the MoIT using government resources for the time being. Subsidy recipients will continue to have the funds paid in the standard way to the applicant’s account. The suspension of the Operational Programme entails suspending the certification of funds from the EU budget to the state budget. As for open calls, the receipt of application is still underway, with new calls set to continue in line with the effective schedule.
The MoIT has introduced internal measures aimed at reducing the error rate and is working with the European Commission to remove the errors. As a next step, the setup and conditions of individual subsidy programmes will be revised.
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