The invisible people behind 111 billion euros of EU-funded work.

The European Union pays for people, for hours worked. The Commission puts personnel costs at roughly two thirds of a research grant. Across its two flagship research programmes, that is at least 111 billion euros in staff time.

European rules require a signed record, a timesheet, for every hour. The EU agencies that pay confirmed that they never receive it. What reaches them is a total: months of work, by an organisation, on a project. Never the person. Never the full portfolio of the person.

A timesheet is checked, occasionally, one grant at a time. But no one adds a person up across their grants. Not the agency that pays, not the Commission, not the Court of Auditors. Nobody. No body.

The Union is now writing its next 2-trillion-euro budget on the same model. So I tested one sector, in Belgium: 758 organisations, their parallel grants, their employment footprint. The trail led to one line in the accounts where EU-funded work vanishes: Code 61, beside the rent and the electricity. No name, no rate, no hours. Billions in public money.

This investigation is the overview the Commission does not have on the one thing the Treaty obliges it to deliver: sound financial management.