Study on Gold Plating among EU programmes

MDI analysed together with Sweco the provisions on simplification of management of the European Structural and Investment Funds. The aim was to observe gold plating, national implementation of legislation that exceeds the demands of EU legislation. In other words the programme becomes unnecessarily more complicated and expensive. The study compared the situation in Member States, illustrated in which parts of the programming process gold plating is most frequent and why, and clarified the administrative costs by Member States. In Finland the study consisted of analysing the structural fund programme and rural development programme. The data was gathered through interviewing the managing or payment authorities and sending a survey to the beneficiaries.