The EU has opened an official investigation to see what’s happened to over €200 million of EU funds that seem to have “vanished” in Andalucia.
The corruption investigation looks at how the Junta de Andalucia has been spending the EU funds, which were supposed to go on labour policies and reduction of workplace accidents.
One angle of the investigation is looking into whether the Junta de Andalucia has flouted workplace rules for its own workers by not implementing the correct health and safety measures, despite having received vast amounts of EU money to implement these measures.
A number of workers and companies have filed complaints to the EU High Commissioner alleging that public money supposed to be spent on these schemes never turned up, meaning workers were working in dangerous conditions.
But the other angle is to see what happened with EU cash in the ERE scandal. Did someone pinch it, as the investigating Judges say they did?
If so, Europe wants its money back.
The EU says that the Junta has been unable to explain away the complaints and suspicions, and so it has been forced to open an investigation into the matter.