2023-06-28 05:25:57
The Corona aid agency COFAG is being wound up. The plan should be in place by the end of September. “I commissioned ABBAG this afternoon to work out a settlement concept for COFAG together with COFAG,” Finance Minister Magnus Brunner (ÖVP) told journalists on Tuesday evening. He will then decide “promptly” on the resolution. The Covid relief measures and the special provisions expire on June 30 or will be lifted, Brunner reminded.
The Court of Auditors also recommended examining the dissolution of the institute, which was only created as part of the Corona crisis, after the measures had expired. “It was always clear to us, as the name Covid-19 financing agency suggests, that it is of course an institution with an expiration date,” said the minister. “COFAG has proven itself, yes, but it has now done its job”. He thanks the employees for their commitment.
The Corona aid payments are hardly relevant to the budget and COFAG is no longer necessary as a payment pool, said Brunner. The institution has processed 99 percent of the more than 1.3 million applications from 660,000 applicants. 15 billion euros were paid out – an average of 22,000 euros per applicant.
As early as October 2022, the Court of Auditors presented a very critical report on COFAG and recommended its dissolution. For the auditors of the Court of Auditors, it is unclear why a new settlement office, COFAG, was needed at all. Tax offices or the state development bank AWS already had the necessary information and expertise. COFAG bought in expertise in funding and state aid law, which professional funding bodies usually have themselves, writes the Court of Auditors. The construction had “avoidable over-funding potential”. The Court of Auditors also criticized the links between COFAG and its parent company ABBAG. The former COFAG managing director, Bernhard Perner, was initially also managing director of ABBAG.
The Constitutional Court (VfGH) also has doubts that the payment of up to 19 billion euros in aid via a separate agency such as COFAG is permissible instead of as a sovereign administration and has initiated an official examination procedure. At a public hearing two weeks ago, the supreme judges indicated that they were critical of the National Council’s lack of control options and that setting up a separate agency could violate the principle of efficiency. On the other hand, Brunner pointed out that COFAG is 100 percent state-owned, as are other funding agencies.
Finance Minister Brunner sees COFAG and the Covid funding in Austria in general as a success story. “The establishment of COFAG was certainly not a mistake,” he said in the “Report”. He would not do anything differently than his predecessor as finance minister, Gernot Blümel, who would only change “one thing or the other”. He is also relaxed about a possible sub-committee on COFAG. The financial management is excellent, but handling the Covid aid would have been an additional task, “I’m not sure if it would have been possible in terms of speed and quality”.
The criticism was partly justified, also in relation to marksmanship, but great social damage was averted by the fast and intensive government. “Certainly not everything was done right, but certainly not so many things went wrong either, as our economic data from last year showed.”
In a broadcast, FPÖ General Secretary Christian Hafenecker described Brunner’s announcement as ambush-like. It is a “transparent maneuver that is doomed to fail immediately in order to avoid dealing with the potential malversations with corona aid funds”. Brunner is trying to flee to the front, “that’s like putting a child away politically,” said Hafenecker.
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