Plzen – 2015 European Capital of Culture: out of the originally planned 17 projects only 11 implemented
PRESS RELEASE on Audit No. 15/04 – December 7, 2015
The Supreme Audit Office (SAO) scrutinized the programme entitled “Plzen – 2015 European Capital of Culture”, under which 17 separate projects were approved by the Southwest Regional Council. EU funds in the amount of EUR 19.5 million were allocated for the projects.
Only 11 out of the originally planned 17 projects were implemented in the end. Until a fairly advanced state of preparations, the Municipal Council of Plzen had not made the decision on which projects to implement. One third of allocated sum (EUR 6 million) were not drawn due to the lack of investment readiness. The originally planned 17 projects aimed at building five new headquarters of important cultural institutions – for example, a theatre and a repository – but only the new theatre building was finished in the end. With this particular theatre building project (Project), auditors were not allowed to scrutinize 75 % of expenditures because of the existing competences of the SAO. According to the Municipal Council of Plzen, total costs of the Project amounted to CZK 952 million.
Out of the total costs of the Project, auditors could only scrutinize eligible expenditures in the amount of CZK 233 million, which were spent on pre-selected building works. Among the intended benefits of the planned construction were some striking architectonic elements, including an interactive sculpture. However, during the on-the-spot check auditors found out that the building had been constructed from other then the planned specified materials and did not fulfil its proclaimed mission, as well as other planned architectonical features. Auditors concluded that the new building did not match the planned specifications, which had been approved based on the aid applications.
During the auditing operation, auditors also aimed at evaluation processes, on the basis of which projects were selected for the support by the Regional Council. The evaluation of projects was not found objective. In some cases, the evaluators highly prised projects, which did not fulfil the criteria at all, sometimes the evaluations were contradicted as there was no methodology. For example, during the evaluation of the above mentioned new theatre building project, the evaluators had to assess to what extent the new building could enlarge the town’s cultural offering. In this particular case, full point account was awarded, in spite the new theatre building should only have replaced the old one. Auditors also concluded that there were limited indicators set for evaluation of actual values of projects as the chosen indicators said nothing about the actual prices.
Auditors selected 20 procurement procedures for scrutiny and found errors as well. Among them were violations of the time-limit laid down by the law. In case of the new theatre building project, serious shortcomings were also revealed during an audit, which was previously carried out by the Auditing Authority Department of the Ministry of Finance. With the Project, the Regional Council decided to apply a subsidy reduction in the amount of CZK 65 million.
Communication Department
Supreme Audit Office