Revisiting the role of domestic politics: politicisation and European Cohesion Policy performance in Central and Eastern Europe

European funds in Central and Eastern Europe: drivers of change or mere funding transfers? Evaluating the impact of European aid on national and local development in Bulgaria and Romania

“…One of the primary mechanisms consisted in rigging public procurement contracts (Doroftei & Dimulescu, 2015;Fazekas, Chvalkovska, Skuhrovec, Tóth, & King, 2013;Stefanov, Yalamov, & Karaboev, 2015). Equally, the politicisation of senior management (in Managing Authorities/Intermediate Bodies) overseeing the selection EU funded projects and their implementation could have facilitated profiteering and embezzlement of EU aid (Hagemann, 2017;Surubaru, 2017b).…”

The Western Balkans and the EU budget: the effects of enlargement

“…Numerous studies (for a recent review, see Incaltarau et al 2019) have shown that the ability of EU member states to successfully utilize EU funds is limited by their administrative capacity, which refers to institutional infrastructures and human resources required to implement EU policies (Milio 2007;Tosun 2014;Bachtler et al 2014;Kersan Škabić and Tijanić 2017). It is further constrained by governance quality at central and regional levels, including political stability and the lack of corruption (Rothstein et al 2013;Rodríguez-Pose and Garcilazo 2015;Surubaru 2017;Hagemann 2019), and by macroeconomic and financial absorption capacity, since the use of EU funds requires national/regional co-financing and sufficient project readiness (Šumpíková et al 2004;Mrak and Horvat 2009;Zaman and Georgescu 2009). Considering substantial deficiencies of the WBCs in all of the above-mentioned areas and the early membership experience of the recent EU entrants, absorption capacity of the WBCs is likely to present a challenge.…”

EU funds, state capacity and the development of transnational industrial policies in Europe’s Eastern periphery

“…In 2012, following a corruption scandal and a temporary funding freeze by the EU, the Ministry transferred the responsibility for SME applications to the RDAs, but did not allocate additional resources to enable these bodies to manage their new duties. The reason for this major institutional reorganization was the discovery of a complex embezzlement scheme which involved more than 100 'ghost' companies misappropriating more than EUR 20 million (Surubaru, 2017b).…”

“…The systematic weaknesses in Romania's administrative capacity, political instability, and widespread corruption precluded the efficient use of EU funds: in 2007-2013 five out of the seven Romanian OPs had to be either interrupted or suspended by the EU because of serious irregularities affecting management and implementation (Surubaru, 2017a). Furthermore, the frequent changes in government 21 and the politicization of public administration involved high staff turnover in the agencies responsible for EU funds and resulted in repeated institutional reshuffling (Surubaru, 2017b(Surubaru, , 2017a. All of this prevented the gradual expansion of the institutional support network for SMEs that we observed in Poland.…”