EU Commissioner Siim Kallas: "The accusations that the Commission is not accountable for how it spends EU money are ridiculous."
Since 12 years in a row: No discharge of the EU's budget
- Thursday, 27 October 2006
This week the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has refused the discharge of the EU's budget for 12 years in a row. Its report cites "weak internal controls for the majority of EU expenditure, both within Member States and at the Commission, and a high incidence of errors in the underlying transactions".
The ECA claims that "overdeclarations and ineligible expenditure continue to go undetected within the majority of EU expenditure areas". Spendings concerning the structural funds were in 60 from 95 audited cases "not done without considerable errors." The controls done by the member states were not monitored effectively by the EU Commission. Agricultural spendings were "still materially affected by errors." So all in all up to two thirds of the 105 billion EU budget were affected by irregularities.
ECA president Hubert Weber said in the press conference: "Overall the situation has not substantially changed since last year. (...) [It signifies] that judging by the results of the Court's detailed audit work, errors with a financial impact are found too frequenty for the Court to conclude that all is well."
Siim Kallas, the commission vice-president in charge of audit and anti-fraud, has justified the EU Commission, suggesting that the auditors themselves do not play fair in their reports. "The accusations that the Commission is not accountable for how it spends EU money are ridiculous," said Kallas. He claims the ECA ignores the fact that money mis-spent one year is often clawed back the next year, while drawing critical conclusions from analysis of just a small number of transactions. According to the BBC the commissioner said: "You lost your wallet and you get it back with your money inside, but you still consider it a catastrophe. This is our main debate with the Court of Auditors."
Sources: EUObserver Open Europe Wiener Zeitung AFP ECA Press Release