European Court of Auditors. Special report 09/2025: Systems for ensuring compliance of Mechanism of Recovery and Resilience (RRM) spending with public procurement and state aid rules – Improving but still insufficient

A significant proportion of investments involving public procurement and state aid are still to be implemented over the remaining duration of the RRM. Non-compliance with public procurement and state aid rules is a perennial problem in EU budget expenditure. In this audit we examined the RRM controls systems at the Commission and in member states and whether they provide sufficient assurance on compliance with public procurement and state aid rules. We found that despite improvements in its audit work, the Commission has not been able to draw sufficient assurance on whether member states have effective control systems to ensure that RRM spending complies with the rules. We make recommendations to improve guidance and transparency and to increase EU level assurance in these areas.