Link to the study - European Parliament - Europa

Policy Department D: Budgetary Affairs
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Figure 36: External PMU design and its roles
Source: Authors
That brought the managing institutions into a complex and intransparent situation and limited their
sense of responsibility:
The national administration, controlling the managing organisation, had no complete control
over the PMU’s activities, as part of the PMU was controlled by EBRD.
The consultant company did not bear responsibility for the decisions prepared by the PMU
(strategic decisions, to be decided by a control institution) and taken (operational decisions, to
be made by the management level of the managing organisation) or for those being in any way
adequate, correct or appropriate. The only risk taken over was that the contract with EBRD failed,
was delayed or the customer (EBRD) was not satisfied with the work provided. None of these
risks has to do with the success or failure of the decommissioning process and the decisions to
be taken and their risk.
The external experts in the PMU had no obligation to report to the national administration and
no formal right to do so, even if requested, because their (and the external consultant company)
was formally a consultant for EBRD, and had no mandate from, obligations in respect to or
reporting requirements towards the managing organisation or its control institution.
In this structure responsibilities for management decisions, be they of a strategic or an operative
character (see chapter 2.4.3), were
In-transparently attributed (who prepares proposals for projects or strategic decisions to be
taken, who decides on those proposals and on which legitimation basis, with which quality
and reliability are those to be prepared and decided, etc.);
Completely mixed (the difference between strategic and operational decisions got lost, the
awareness of responsibilities is unclear, for insiders as well as for outsiders);
In-transparently deployed over five different institutions, all responsible or not for selective
parts of the whole process.
The decision to install those units on this unclear basis neither strengthened the national
administration’s nor the managing organisation’s sense of responsibility. This was even further
weakened by the fact that for most of the strategic (see chapter 2.4.3) and as well for all operational
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