A “what if” analysis for sound financial management decisions in Romanian European Social Fund grants evaluation

European Commission trusted for implementation the European Social Fund (ESF) to Member States through a commonly agreed decentralized management system, including compliance to the “sound financial management” principle within the Members’ State designated Authorities obligations. While implementing ESF, Romania should comply too with this principle all projects cycle life: national ESF programming, launching calls for grant proposals, evaluating applications and contracting, monitoring and disbursing sums. Even if performance’s basis is put in the programming phase, grant assessment phase stays as the most important in fixing each grant’s future performance and the program’s performance framework as well. Our study tends to enhance the importance of assessment process for sound financial management implementation in a “what if” analysis based on potential financial corrections applied due to a potential deviation of proposed costs from fixed standard cost. Conclusions lead us to a number of scenarios that may be practically used for assisting management’s decision and reporting towards a sound ESF implementation in Romania.