The use of European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) is at times impeded by gold-plating practices. Gold-plating refers to administrative rules and regulatory obligations that go beyond the ESIF requirements set out at European Union (EU) level, resulting in excessive administrative burden for programme bodies and beneficiaries.
In autumn 2016, REGI Committee of the European Parliament commissioned an international consortium of researchers (Spatial Foresight, ÖIR and t33), in cooperation with national experts from EU Member States, to conduct a study on gold-plating in 2014-2020 ESIF. BGI Consulting team participated in the latter as experts of the Baltic States.
The aim of this study was to analyse gold-plating in ESIF (European Regional and Development Fund (ERDF), Cohesion Fund (CF), European Social Fund (ESF), European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) and European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF)) in view of its impacts on the administrative burden for programme bodies and beneficiaries. The study sought to identify specific gold-plating practices at different stages of the programme lifecycle and the main reasons behind it.
In the beginning of 2017, the study results were presented in the report, available online.