The European Union's post-pandemic recovery fund has poured €43 billion into improving the energy efficiency of private homes, but a damning report from the European Court of Auditors (ECA) published on Tuesday concludes the program has failed to maximise energy savings, monitor results properly or ensure taxpayers received value for money.
“EU renovation funding for private homes should go to those projects with the greatest potential for cutting energy use. However, we saw all too often that Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funds went where they were easiest to spend, not where they would make the biggest difference”, said Nikolaos Milionis, the ECA member responsible for the audit.
The ECA auditors argue that while the RFF dramatically expanded investment in home renovation, the programme's design favoured politically expedient over the deep renovations needed to meet Europe's long-term climate ambitions.
Rather than transforming Europe's ageing housing stock – which has been in the spotlight as recent heatwaves that hit Western Europe turned buildings into heat traps – the EU auditors found that the RRF largely financed medium-depth renovations, delayed more complex projects, relied on questionable methods for measuring energy savings and paid little attention to whether billions of euros were being spent efficiently.
