Jean Monnet Module: TH Aschaffenburg and University of Pisa on the stimulus package “NextGenerationEU”

For the third year in a row, Prof. Dr. Kristina Balleis gave an English lecture lasting several hours on ‘The Evolution of the EU Funding Universe - Different Management Approaches and Implications for the Auditor’ as part of a Jean Monnet module on 8 May 2025. This was aimed not only at students of the University of Pisa/Italy (Political Science, Law, Economics), but this time also at students of the Master's programme International Management at the TH Aschaffenburg.

The lecture is part of a three-year (2023-2025) Erasmus+ project funded by the European Union entitled ‘NGEU and safeguarding the EU's financial interest: the challenging roles for the European and the Italian Court of Auditors at the dawn of new paradigms in auditing and protecting the European budget’. The University of Pisa was awarded the contract for this due to the involvement of Prof. Dr. Alexandra Angress in the 2022 application. The contact for the interesting collaboration between the TH Aschaffenburg, the University of Pisa, the European Court of Auditors, the Italian Court of Auditors and INTOSAI – an international organisation of supreme audit institutions – was established by Dr. Benjamin Jakob. He studied business administration and law at the Faculty of Economics and Law in Aschaffenburg and works as an EU official at the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg.

The Jean Monnet modules aim to provide learners with innovative, interesting and specific EU content. They also aim to deepen knowledge about European integration and integrate EU-related topics into teaching and research. In this case, the University of Pisa was commissioned to analyse the largest European economic stimulus package ‘NextGenerationEU’ together with experts from the aforementioned cooperation partners. The aim was to analyse the impact of the programme on the EU's financial interests. The package of measures was adopted by the EU in response to the coronavirus pandemic and its considerable challenges. In her presentation, Prof. Dr. Kristina Balleis began by explaining the hybrid nature of this recovery instrument, which is quite controversial in Germany (see BVerfG, judgement of 6 December 2022 - 2 BvR 547/21, 2 BvR 798/21). The lion's share of this is made up of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (650 billion euros), which is intended to strengthen countries particularly affected by coronavirus and structurally weaker countries, including Italy and Spain. In order to provide the EU with the necessary funds for the grants and loans, the European Commission was exceptionally and temporarily authorised to take out loans on the capital markets. These shall be repaid by the end of 2058.

The new form of fund management that was made possible for this facility was also scrutinised. In contrast to the usual practice in cohesion funding, the decision was not made in favour of the usual shared responsibility for the allocation of funds. In addition to the Commission, the Member States in particular have the task of ensuring that the EU's financial interests are safeguarded. Instead, full responsibility for the management of funds has been transferred to the European Commission, albeit under special conditions. The funds are paid directly to the Member States. This is done on the basis of national recovery and resilience plans adopted by the Council of the EU. Disbursement is primarily linked to the satisfactory fulfilment of milestones and targets for planned reform and investment projects that have been defined in advance. Funding is independent of proven costs, which makes external auditing considerably more difficult, especially for the European Court of Auditors.

Typical of a Jean Monnet module is public access to the teaching and learning materials, which can be found here: https://nexgen-pfi.sp.unipi.it/nexgen-pfi-studies/reading-materials/