The Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) today received a delegation from the Polish Ministry of Finance, accompanied by the European Commission, to advise them on the implementation of spending review studies or Spending Reviews. To implement these projects, the Polish Ministry is supported by the Technical Support Instruments (TSI) managed by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reforms (DG REFORM). These instruments provide EU Member States with tailor-made expertise for designing and implementing reforms.
With the aim of promoting the exchange of information and knowledge between the different member states, DG Reform is promoting meetings such as the one held today at AIReF. In addition, the Polish delegation of the Ministry plans to hold another meeting tomorrow, Friday, with the Directorate General for Budgets of the Ministry of Finance and Public Function.
During the meeting, the director of AIReF’s Public Expenditure Review Division gave the Polish delegation an overview of the expenditure review processes carried out by the institution to date. In addition, various members of the division detailed the results of the studies that may be of most interest to Poland, such as the one on incentives for hiring and self-employment or hospital spending in the national health system. In addition, they presented the newly developed Findings and Proposals Observatory, an interactive tool that facilitates the monitoring of evaluations and improves the availability of evidence, analysis and objective data.
The European Commission has already implemented more than 1,500 projects in support of reforms in the 27 member countries. Spain has so far benefited from 65 projects funded by the TSI or its predecessor (Structural Reform Support Programme). AIReF has participated in 3 of them in the area of evaluation and will participate this year in a new multi-IFI TSI that will cover several areas (development and improvement of macroeconomic and fiscal models, development of a climate change module to be incorporated into the analysis of public debt sustainability, strengthening of communication capacity and development of an external evaluation).