National
Development Agency

IIn view of how invitation-to-tender, negotiation procedures were applied on several instances in the case of public procurement procedures conducted during the course of 2004 and 2005 within the framework of the Metro 4 project – which have since proved contrary to, or not totally in compliance with, Community expectations in the practice of the EU project evaluations carried out since – NDA initiates removing the value of contracts that entered into force on the grounds of such procedures from the request for EU funds submitted, hence reducing to zero the risk of repayment of funds in the context of supervisory control carried out by the Commission.   

Following the receipt of the first series of general remarks in connection with public procurements at the beginning of 2009, in order to avoid the occurrence of similar problems in the future and with the aim of minimising the risk of settlement of accounts with the EU, the president of NDA immediately notified  potential project hosts and beneficiaries – in a letter referring to the practice of the European Commission - that the Agency does not recommend the application of procedures that fail to comply with tendering requirements ensuring the widest possible participation. In this letter, NDA explicitly called on project hosts to avoid the application of negotiation procedures in the future, or it expects 100% guarantees should such procedures be applied.

NDA is currently engaging in intense negotiations with the competent individuals of the EU Commission on the rate of financial correction to be applied in the case of the Metro 4 project. With respect to the above, NDA is concurrently drafting its proposal on how Hungary could be capable of using the full framework of EU funding made available with maximum efficiency.