It’s that time of the year again; the leaves are falling from the trees, bonfire wood is soon to be gathered, and the annual pantomime where the European Union takes collective leave of its senses and gives us a rare moment of frankness and honesty. I refer, of course, to the Court of Auditors report – which, for the 22nd year in a row, has issued an ‘adverse opinion on the regularity and legality of the payments’ underlying the EU accounts. An adverse opinion is rare in accountancy, and is issued only in serious cases where there has been a substantial departure from generally accepted accounting principles. British euro-apologist politicians love to find new and inventive ways of denying that this means the EU’s accounts haven’t been signed off.
The European Union has tried many things: it’s tried to explain this anomaly away. It’s tried making excuses, it’s tried blaming the member states for making the mistakes (Seriously? They think all 28 countries in the EU simultaneously all make the same mistakes, as do various countries across the world in receipt of EU funds, but it’s never the Commission’s fault?), and it’s recently tried appointing people with horribly federalist pro-EU views to the Court of Auditors. It hasn’t worked; the Auditors still embarrass the European Union on an annual basis.
In the 320-page report, the Court of Auditors blasted various examples of EU waste and mismanagement. But the Court of Auditor’s findings only told a small part of the true scale of EU wastefulness, because only a small sample of all expenditure is scrutinised by the Court. There are undoubtedly many similar examples which will simply never be found.
The error rate is 3.8%, almost double the 2% threshold which is the maximum considered acceptable by the Court of Auditors, affecting a whopping €5.4 billion of EU spending.
There are various examples of waste which are utterly bizarre. A €4,000 mountain bike, a €10,000 donation to a local church and a €3,500 panoramic spyglass were claimed for in Italy as part of an €80,000 spending spree on unnecessary items for a project A youth club in Azerbaijan was given €16,500 but the Court of Auditors was unable to actually trace the youth club, leading to fears that the money had disappeared altogether. A €250,000 euro grant for cloud computing services was used to pay staff for hours they didn’t work, and give them bonuses that they weren’t entitled to. In Italy nearly €100,000 was awarded for building dry stone walls which the Court says had no link to any EU objectives
The European Union has tried many things: it’s tried to explain this anomaly away. It’s tried making excuses, it’s tried blaming the member states for making the mistakes (Seriously? They think all 28 countries in the EU simultaneously all make the same mistakes, as do various countries across the world in receipt of EU funds, but it’s never the Commission’s fault?), and it’s recently tried appointing people with horribly federalist pro-EU views to the Court of Auditors. It hasn’t worked; the Auditors still embarrass the European Union on an annual basis.
In the 320-page report, the Court of Auditors blasted various examples of EU waste and mismanagement. But the Court of Auditor’s findings only told a small part of the true scale of EU wastefulness, because only a small sample of all expenditure is scrutinised by the Court. There are undoubtedly many similar examples which will simply never be found.
The error rate is 3.8%, almost double the 2% threshold which is the maximum considered acceptable by the Court of Auditors, affecting a whopping €5.4 billion of EU spending.
There are various examples of waste which are utterly bizarre. A €4,000 mountain bike, a €10,000 donation to a local church and a €3,500 panoramic spyglass were claimed for in Italy as part of an €80,000 spending spree on unnecessary items for a project A youth club in Azerbaijan was given €16,500 but the Court of Auditors was unable to actually trace the youth club, leading to fears that the money had disappeared altogether. A €250,000 euro grant for cloud computing services was used to pay staff for hours they didn’t work, and give them bonuses that they weren’t entitled to. In Italy nearly €100,000 was awarded for building dry stone walls which the Court says had no link to any EU objectives
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