The Minister of the Presidency Mariana Vieira da Silva assured today that the Government has done everything possible to reduce bureaucracy in community funds trying, however, to maintain a “virtuous balance” between transparency and efficiency.
“The issue of bureaucracy, mainly linked to EU funds, is a difficult one because part of it is inherited and constitutes obligations that the European Commission also imposes on us and that we need to comply with,” said Mariana Vieira da Silva to journalists on the sidelines of a seminar of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP) on the new law on local finances and European funds held in Matosinhos, in the district of Porto.
Then, added the governor, there are dimensions of public interest that must be preserved.
“But we have done all the work we can do to reduce bureaucracy,” she assured.
The minister mentioned that the community framework that has just begun already has less bureaucratic elements, giving as an example the fact that all projects are submitted on the same portal.
Which means that nobody has to be repeating the information that is provided, she stressed.
With regard to the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), Mariana Vieira da Silva assumed there is still some work to be done in terms of debureaucratization.
“It is always difficult because there is a balance here between control, which is necessary, and flexibility, and it is this balance that we are trying to strike. We need to be aware that every time we remove a control it rains criticism and, therefore, we work towards this virtuous balance between transparency and efficiency”, she said.
The Minister of the Presidency also pointed out that, many times, it is the beneficiaries, who are on a daily basis opening tenders and accounting for them, who provide information about what can be done to make them more flexible.