With the assistance of the ESI Funds, the Union addresses its efforts for its economic, territorial and social cohesion. However, fraudulent practices or other intentional or unintentional misconduct may occur during the implementation of this policy in general or during individual projects.
The research challenge of the master's thesis is a comprehensive assessment of the controls of Cohesion environmental projects, with an emphasis on the evaluation of first-level controls carried out by the intermediate bodies. This control is also the most comprehensive, due the intermediary bodies performs a 100 % administrative control. It means that they examine all the documents related to the particular operation. The purpose of this thesis is to present the procedures of this control and to check, if they cover all risks for irregularities. The first goal of the Master thesis was to examine how cohesion projects are controlled in Slovenia. The second goal was to investigate how often authorities detect irregularities and what kind of irregularities are the most common. The third goal was to identify some irregularities, and thus to give stakeholders guidance on how to avoid these irregularities.
The findings of the thesis have shown that Cohesion environmental projects in the Republic of Slovenia are controlled in accordance with the regulations and that they cover most of the risks that exist in the performance of public procurement. Controls of the Cohesion fund, especially the first level control, where emphasis is placed in this thesis, achieve the goal of preventing and detecting irregularities, while respecting deadlines and planned costs. In the context of the preparation for the 2021-2027 financial perspective, the author proposes more attention on the rationalization of cohesion policy, and thus the increase the benefits.
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