“Transparency is not just to annoy people in governance, but it’s necessary in order to control and monitor how public money is used,” said the Left’s Marc Baum, regarding budget criticism claims for the non-profit FrEsch on Thursday.
Since January, opposition parties on Esch municipal council have been asking for insight into the ASBL’s finances, as well as details for other non-profits “Escher Kulturnuecht” and “Francofolies.” On Wednesday, municipal councillors finally received the requested documents - an important step towards transparency, according to Baum.
Nevertheless, the question arises if it is worth the municipality giving so much money in subsidies to the charity in the first place. “FrEsch is subsidised by the municipality of Esch to the tune of 4.5 million euros - a huge amount and much more than other cultural institutions in Esch. Now we can see if this is really worth it, for an ASBL that only organises events, in comparison to other cultural institutions which manage to run a year’s worth of programming on substantially less money.”
The LSAP’s Steve Faltz said the fact that councillors finally had an overview of the charity’s expenditure was only due to the pressure exerted on the association. “We aren’t trying to destroy anything, but we need to know what is being done with 4.5 million euros. That’s what we are trying to find out. If we, as the opposition, are no longer allowed to do this, then we are failing at our jobs. It is our job to make sure that taxpayers’ money is being spent correctly.”
Now, almost 150 pages of documents will be analysed in detail. Baum underlined that they would also consider whether the municipal council should be more involved in the non-profit’s governance.
