In 2012, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs acquired the obligation from the Polish Senate to award grants to the Poles living abroad.
In line with the provisions of the Act on public utility activity and volunteer work of 24 April 2003, the Ministry provided organisational and legal framework to divide grants among organisations cooperating with the Poles living abroad. It organised a competition to perform the public task ”Cooperation with the Poles living abroad in 2013”. As a result of the competition, 93 agreements were concluded to subsidise projects of nearly PLN 58 million, where the grant amount exceeded PLN 50 million. The Competition Committee was established to review and select applications.
According to NIK, the adopted legal provisions and their implementation did not fully guarantee transparency of the projects’ selection, openness of proceedings and equal treatment of all entities entering the competition.
NIK identified several irregularities being the consequence of errors made in the Committee works:
- admitting a Committee member declaring a conflict of interests to work on the review of offers;
- evaluating the content of some grant offers in two stages (which made them win extra points). In that way 54 offers (out of 323 ones subject to substantive review) were privileged in relation to others. NIK identified there a violation of the principles of transparency and fair competition;
- accepting errors in cost estimates of three (in 53 audited) grant agreements;
- incomplete recording of all activities related to the offers’ review.
NIK points out that the Ministry signed grant agreements too late which shortened the time the organisations had to execute the project. The first agreements were signed only two and a half months after the competition closure, the last ones even after half a year. NIK considers the Ministry’s explanations concerning the need to make internal consultations as unacceptable.
NIK appreciates that the Ministry developed the ”Plan of cooperation with the Poles living abroad in 2013”. NIK notices the necessity, though, to prepare and adopt the Government Programme setting out strategic goals and tasks of the Government. It may be the basis for defining the terms of cooperation at the operational level. The ”Government Programme for cooperation with the Poles living abroad” specifies tasks until 2012. It means that Poland has no up-to-date government plan of cooperation with the Poles living abroad.
The audit findings made NIK address the Minister of Foreign Affairs with the following recommendations:
- intensify works to make sure the Council of Ministers adopt the new Government Programme for cooperation with the Poles living abroad,
- adopt legislative solutions to ensure implementation of the principles of transparency and fair competition, laid out in Article 5 Section 3 of the Act on public utility activity and volunteer work and guarantee consistency of these provisions,
- develop and implement effective mechanisms to eliminate errors in the calculation of prices, including significant discrepancies in substantive review of the same projects,
- ensure effective mechanisms to eliminate conflicts of interests of the Competition Committee Members,
- ensure effective mechanisms to minimise the risk of errors in the cost estimates of projects and documentation of competitions.
