Handling taxpayers' money

Forest Fund: Massive criticism from the Federal Audit Office

The auditors criticized that too little attention was paid to improving the protection forest.(Bild: Reinhard Holl)

The auditors of the Austrian Court of Audit have not found any conscientious handling of taxpayers' money by the regional authorities responsible for the forest fund in the federal state of Ländle.

The state's website still praises the excellent reputation of the Forest Fund as an "unbureaucratic, flexible and accurate funding instrument". The work was also positively noted by the Federal Audit Office in 2015 and recommended to other federal states for imitation. According to the latest report, which was published on Friday, the future text will probably have to be adapted slightly.

Only Styria was praised. Vorarlberg contributed the "worst practice" examples. The audit specifically scrutinized the forest fund, which was launched in 2020 under the then Minister of Agriculture Elisabeth Köstinger (ÖVP). The subsidies for foresters were justified by the pandemic, damage caused by the bark beetle and poor timber prices. The fund was initially set up for the years 2021 and 2022 in parallel with existing EU co-financed funding, with a total of around 890 million euros available throughout Austria from 2014 to 2027.

Funding requirements
The Ministry of Agriculture set the requirements and apparently left too much leeway to the provinces, which were tasked with processing and approving the funding. "Regulations on appropriate and effective risk-based control procedures were largely missing", the auditors found. The funding was calculated according to standard cost rates, some of which were based on criteria that were not a prerequisite for funding. The state auditors also noted critically: "In Vorarlberg, it was noticeable that it was mainly those subsidies that could also generate revenue from timber sales that were used."

In Vorarlberg, it was noticeable that the subsidies used were primarily those that also generated revenue from timber sales.

Bundesrechnungshof

The responsible provincial authorities in Styria were much more conscientious in their handling of taxpayers' money, it is emphasized. In Vorarlberg, on the other hand, framework applications were submitted by the Vorarlberg Forest Association without knowledge of the beneficiaries and without detailed data on the funding applied for. This definitely does not comply with the requirements of the special directive on forest funds. In the case of the framework applications, the payment notifications from the provinces of Carinthia, Tyrol and Vorarlberg only referred to the applicants and not to the individual funding recipients. It was therefore not clear who the funding recipients were.