Drucker: No Serious Flaws Revealed during Audit of Innovation Calls (2)

Bratislava, 10 December (TASR) - An audit of innovation grant calls for robotics and automation hasn't revealed any serious flaws, only administrative shortcomings and ethical breaches, said Education Minister and acting Deputy Prime Minister for the Recovery Plan and a Knowledge-based Economy Tomas Drucker (Voice-SD) after the government session on Wednesday. Former deputy prime minister for the recovery plan and a knowledge-based economy Peter Kmec (Voice-SD) resigned in November after criticism of grant calls to support science, research and innovation. "All projects that were successful have been examined by an internal audit. At the same time, we've also approached experts from the Czech Republic, who examined the individual evaluation reports in terms of their compliance with the quality of assessment, as well as whether the allocation of points to individual projects was sufficient and correct. According to these audits, no systemic violation of the law or serious shortcomings that would constitute a systemic failure have been noted. The internal audit confirmed some administrative errors that can be rectified on a case-by-case basis," said Drucker, adding that he's had three projects cancelled due to "ethical breaches". The Deputy Prime Minister's Office is prepared to support 33 of the 57 projects that have been successful so far, with the overall volume of grants for all successful projects being reduced by 11 percent. "This creates the premise that private funding will be increased from an average of 25 percent to 36 percent in every single project, because the requirement of the Deputy Prime Minister's Office is that if the public funding subsidy is reduced, the overall scope of the project cannot be reduced. Private companies must therefore cover those reduced funds themselves," added Drucker. "Instead of finally disclosing the complete documentation concerning Kmec's dubious grants, acting Deputy Prime Minister Drucker is looking to give Christmas presents to selected companies," said opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) MP Jan Hargas. "At the same time, the coalition did not allow us to carry out an independent inspection in the form of an MPs' survey, pretending that an internal audit is sufficient. Well, it's not, an internal audit is not an independent audit," said Hargas. He again called on Drucker to immediately publish all documents related to these grants, including evaluation sheets and how evaluators were assigned to individual projects, as well as the minutes from the selection committee's meetings. "It's unthinkable that state budget funds intended for research and development should be distributed to companies that do not even have it listed in their line of business," concluded Hargas. Kmec resigned on 15 November after being accused by the opposition and media of selecting companies linked to Voice-SD in research and development grant calls totalling some €200 million. When resigning, Kmec didn't admit any fundamental errors and said that he was leaving in order to protect the name of Voice-SD party, Slovakia and industry. NOTE: This story has been extended to include paragraphs 6-9 jrg