Speciaal rapport over resultaten Leonardo da Vinci programma (en)
The European Court of Auditors has today published a performance audit report assessing whether the design and management of the Lifelong Learning Programme's Leonardo da Vinci mobility scheme is likely to lead to effective results.
The current phase of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme (2007-2013) is a continuation of former programmes, Leonardo I and Leonardo II. The European Commission has overall responsibility for the programme and monitors and supervises its implementation in cooperation with National Authorities in each participating country. Operational responsibility for managing mobility projects is fully devolved to the National Agencies designated by the Member States. Mobility projects, the largest part of the programme, enable organisations involved in vocational education and training to send participants to another European country.
The Court found that the Commission had started but not yet completed the establishment of a comprehensive system for the measurement of the impact of the Leonardo programme. As a result, the Commission has not been in a position to measure the impact of the first three years of Leonardo - approximately half its lifespan. There are shortcomings in the system for reporting on the results and effects of the programme. The objectives for the Leonardo programme are rather general, making it difficult to measure how mobility projects can contribute to them.
In designing the current Leonardo programme, the Commission took account of its own mandatory evaluations of the predecessor programme but did not systematically take account of other important studies and reports. The operational elements of the programme, including publicity, promotion, and the annual programming cycle, were generally well managed, but the Commission did not address the difficulties of applicants in finding host partners and did not ensure the quality of National Agencies’ assessments of grant applications.
The Court makes a series of recommendations to the Commission. The most important ones being that the Commission should explore options to ensure a user-friendly and effective host partner search tool and should finalise its work on setting SMART (i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely) objectives and performance indicators without further delay. Since Leonardo is part of an integrated Lifelong Learning Programme with various educational and training initiatives under a single umbrella, many findings, conclusions and recommendations apply to the Programme as a whole.
In performance audit, the Court uses a variety of audit methodologies to assess management and monitoring systems and information on performance against criteria derived from legislation and the principles of sound financial management.
The purpose of this press release is to give a summary of the Special Report adopted by the Court of Auditors which is available on the Court’s Internet site (www.eca.europa.eu) and will be published shortly in a printed format.
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