PM Iveta Radicova has been brainstorming recently with nine of her ministers to find ways to clean up the mess surrounding the drawing of EU funds, as she admits that Slovakia does not exactly have the best reputation in this respect.
She was perturbed particularly by the article published in the New York Times during her visit to the US in which it highlighted Slovakia as a typical example of how EU funds are being misused and wasted.
Now the ministers have been assigned the homework of analysing pending projects and what their real benefit will be for the people of the country. They should then decide whether to scrap certain projects if they are deemed pointless of inefficient, so that the funds can be allocated somewhere else.
Special attention is being focused on projects on the informatisation of society, and so the government wants to examine all the contracts signed in this area and cancel any that have disadvantageous terms. Some of them have already been terminated, including one worth EUR 170 that was cut short by culture minister Daniel Krajcer.
Another task handed out to the ministers is for them to come up with projects that will bolster employment in the country. They should present their ideas to the Prime Minister by the end of November.