Slowaakse minister treedt af na gesjoemel met EU-fondsen (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Slovakia's social affairs minister has stepped down after admitting his relatives had applied for money from the EU's structural funds.

Ludovit Kanik announced his resignation on Wednesday (5 October).

The minister is a board member of a company that was a hot candidate for financial support from Brussels, worth around €0.5 million.

His brother had previously also been granted funding for activities boosting tourism in a Slovak region.

The minister's move has caused surprise across the country's political spectrum, as the left-leaning opposition previously failed several times to bring him down due to severe reforms he had introduced in social security area.

The European Commission's spokeswoman for regional policy told the EUobserver, the case has been monitored in Brussels, but only from media reports - along with similar indications earlier in Romania or Lithuania.

"It is mainly up to member states to use the mechanisms available to avoid conflict of interests in the use of EU funds", she said.

"National politicians can be directly or indirectly involved in deciding about who gets the money, and there are regulatory means to spot the problems and solve them at national level, depending on the type of the countries' administration".

The spokeswoman pointed out the commission is then more involved in the final phase of the monitoring, with a possibility to refer cases of fraud to its special fraud police bodies.

"It can happen anywhere"

According to Alan Mayhew from Sussex University, expert on EU's regional policy, the bloc's guidelines for monitoring EU funds do not lack safeguards to prevent cases of corruption.

"It is very difficult to draft rules that take care of everything. If the person who is responsible for public procurement is not honest, he can find ways how to by-pass the regulations, and it can happen anywhere, in Slovakia or in the UK."

The professor argues the EU has become much more cautious in controlling how its funds are used, especially after the fall of the Santer Commission in 1999.

"This now creates the opposite problem: everything is slower and more bureaucratic, so it is often almost not worth it to waste your time applying for EU money", said Mr Mayhew.