The Spanish presidency of the EU in 2010 not only came up short when trying to repair Spain's wounded image in Europe, Africa and Latin America, but it was also sullied by the heap of irregularities in the government's regime, spending and contracts. Specifically, the following ministries were implicated: the presidency, the Minister of the Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Now, the irregularities are being denounced by the Court of Auditors in its "Auditing Report on the Spending Derived from the Spanish Presidency of the EU."
The state's auditing division that starting to confirm that "it has not been able to conduct a sufficient evaluation of the impact of various organized events," because the activities were not approved in full by the Organizational Committee of the Spanish Presidency of the EU and the breakdown that covers the 368 events celebrated in Spain lacks performance objectives and indicators and "does not show the date that it was started, considering that it included events that were ultimately not carried out."
But the bulk of the irregularities found by the auditors pertain to capital expenses, pointed out in the report done by the Minister of the Presidency. Of those, 66% (27.7 million euros) were expenses tallied up by the executive government through 44 contracts of which only two were awarded through transparent procedures and in accord with the Public Sector Contract Law in Spain.