Welfare exists for those who have nothing. But a state audit reveals that part of it has for years gone to people who didn't even meet the basic legal requirement - and the bill, as usual, is paid by the budget. The State Audit Office found around 236,000 euros paid out without grounds in 2024 alone.

The numbers behind that sum tell of a system that doesn't talk to itself. 235 people simultaneously drew both a pension and welfare. Eleven received old-age assistance without meeting the age requirement - 52,000 euros in damage. Twelve kept collecting a guaranteed minimum income despite being entitled to unemployment benefit instead, with the system never noticing.

The scale is large. In 2024, around 10 billion denars (162 million euros) were spent on social cash transfers for roughly 113,666 beneficiaries - 15 percent of the Social Policy Ministry's budget. Within that mass, oversight was more on paper than in the field: missed home visits, irregular annual reviews of entitlements, and - a detail that says it all - files with citizens' sensitive data kept in cardboard boxes and out in hallways.

The audit concludes there's no systematic tracking of payments and recoveries, nor coordination between the ministry and the social work centers. In other words, when someone takes something they aren't owed, there's usually no mechanism to catch it, let alone claw it back.

Here a dose of sobriety is in order. This doesn't mean every welfare recipient is lying - the vast majority genuinely depend on it to survive. The problem isn't the poor, it's a state that can't tell who's entitled from who isn't. And every euro that vanishes where it shouldn't is a euro less for someone who really has nothing.