The EU's cohesion policy, through the European structural and investment funds, provides resources to EU member states with the aim of reducing differences between different regions. It invests in projects that are important for economic development, job creation, environmental protection, research and innovation. Since the efficient and transparent use of public funds is the main guideline of the cohesion policy, we tackled the challenge of irregularities that arise in the process. Their consequence is the return of cohesion funds and the determination of financial corrections by the Commission.
We approached the research of the historical and theoretical background of the cohesion policy through the use of data from existing research, the analysis of legal sources, reports and other materials. The data and records from statistical sources provided us with the basis for comparing the court decisions that we studied in the research part of the thesis. We were interested in the case law of Slovenian courts in comparison with the international case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. We processed the content of the analyzed irregularities and then analyzed the results. The purpose of this task was to examine the irregularities that occur most often with the help of case law, and to further examine the one that occurs most often, both at the national and international level. We compared the findings with previous research and contributed useful information for a better understanding of the issue, specifying the irregularities that appear in the field of cohesion policy and comparing them to one another. This way, stakeholders can investigate the causes of irregularities, eliminate them, or prevent them in the future.
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