Supreme Audit Office: Ministry not keeping track of how EU subsidies help families

It is not clear whether several billions of crowns of subsidies earmarked for supporting socially disadvantaged families has actually helped them, the Czech Supreme Audit Office said in a press release on Monday. According to their conclusions, the Czech Labour and Social Affairs Ministry is not monitoring how EU subsidies concretely help families, rather only keeping track of the number of families that receive subsidies. The labour ministry does not agree with the office's conclusions, the Czech News Agency reports.

The Supreme Audit Office examined the allocation of nine billion crowns given to socially disadvantaged families via several subsidy programmes between 2018 and 2020. According to the press release, the ministry did not set specific aims and it is thus not possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the subsidies.

The Czech Republic is still considered a net recipient of EU subsidies, meaning it receives more money from the EU budget than it contributes to it. In 2020, Czechia paid 2.27 billion euros to the EU budget and received 5.5 billion euros.