Commission mismanaged bailouts: EU auditors

The EU’s accounting watchdog blasted the European Commission for its “weak management” of the financial crisis in a report issued Tuesday into five of the eight bailouts in the European debt crisis, including Ireland and Portugal.

The report by the European Court of Auditors into the bailouts of non-eurozone states Hungary, Romania and Latvia (which has since joined the single currency), and eurozone members Ireland and Portugal, found the Commission had overestimated the strength of public budgets and failed to warn EU leaders of growing fiscal imbalances prior to the crisis.

It also criticized the management of early bailout funds, saying the Commission did not apply similar conditions to countries in comparable economic situations.

“When comparing countries with similar structural weaknesses, it was found that the required reforms were not always in proportion to the problems faced or that they pursued widely different paths,” said the report.

The Court of Auditors’ report is one of the first to examine the Commission’s role in assisting member countries, via programs managed by the European Central Bank and IMF. Greece and Cyprus also received sovereign bailouts, which will be the subject of separate reports, and Spain received assistance for its banking system.

Among the more damning conclusions of the report is that the Commission lacked “key documents” when implementing bailout programs and that calculations underpinning the Commission’s recommendations were not rigorously checked.

The Commission’s spokesperson for economic and financial affairs, Annika Breidthardt, said Tuesday that while the report’s findings were being taken seriously, the bailout programs had clearly met their objectives.

“Some of these countries have the highest growth rates in Europe,” said Breidthardt, referring to countries like Ireland that received bailouts and are now on the road to economic recovery.

“The Commission accepts that there were weaknesses in the management of these early programs,” she said, in response to a question about poor record-keeping. “The financial crisis was something that developed very quickly and needed very quick responses.”

The Commission also said that the report did not take “complex institutional settings” into account, in a written response. It said the role of the EU Council, the IMF, ECB and national governments in implementing bailouts was played down.