Yeah, I used to work for a large-ish company that participated in projects like this.

The company has a project manager with a large spreadsheet to keep track of everything so that no employee would accidentally be officially double booked because that could be detected as fraud.

Some real work was done, but the meetings with other partners were a farce. You had these tiny companies whose only existence was to feed off the European money.

One day our manager asked if the architecture document of a 100kbps modem that I had worked on could be repurposed for a 1 Mbps modem project that was European funded…

https://www.plexal.com/our-partners/

Yes, I remember someone explaining that a similar thing happens with all kinds of research grants in the EU. Some companies specialize in writing very complex grant proposals in just such a way that they are likely accepted, and then produce some useless bullshit reports. Actual specialized companies with expertise in the matters the grant is about don't have the knowledge of how to fill out grant proposals in a way that gets them accepted by bureaucrats because they don't know how the decision process works. Depressing.

Sounds like Brazil...

German here, can confirm. Although, I don't think it's honest incompetence, but intentional corruption. Eg. public calls for bids tend to be a little too specific and politicians tend to get jobs where they funneled public money.

However, things are changing... As of this current government, nobody is scheming anymore. The corruption and wealth extraction happens openly. They are really testing the waters in what they can get away with. It's almost US level audacity, tho not yet as undignified. The sad part is, although people here are universally frustrated about it, they flock to the one party evidently more corrupt and incompetent than the CDU: The AfD.

Honestly, despite political disagreement, all my life I considered myself lucky to live here, but for the first time it makes me sick thinking about Germany's future, working here and paying taxes. And the base motives showing as reactionary malice by my fellow citizens disgust me. It's shameful to admit, but this country is truly ill and deeply corrupt.

People want more government control, but when governments take more control the press tells the people that it's bad and the people acquiesce.

In local forums, so often you see (paraphrasing a pattern) "why are the government interfering with landlords, they should stop so many barbers opening instead". That is, why are the gov interfering in property markets, instead they should interfere in property markets AND plan the economy (where economy here means 'financial system').

The people promoting planned economy without realising it are always 'right wing' 'all Communists should be shot'-types. It's fascinating.