(Financial) services EU Court of Auditors criticizes increasing errors in EU spending
Cases of misuse of EU funds continued to increase last year, according to the EU Court of Auditors. The EU must not "gamble away public trust", warned the President of the Court of Auditors, Tony Murphy, on Thursday.
10.10.2024, 00:44
SDA
The error rate rose to an estimated 5.6 percent, compared to 4.2 percent in the previous year. According to the auditors, most errors occurred in the allocation of regional funding. One of the reasons for this is that the authorities in the member states have funds from various sources at their disposal, which they have to award under time pressure due to the sometimes short deadlines.
According to Thursday's report, a third of the coronavirus aid paid out from Brussels to the EU member states did not meet the requirements. In several cases, the objectives of the funding were also poorly designed. The Court of Auditors also spoke of "persistent problems with the reliability of the information" provided by the member states, meaning that expenditure was not always comprehensible.
Auditors suspected fraud in 20 cases
In principle, the Court of Auditors records an error if EU funds are not spent in accordance with the requirements from Brussels and, for example, target values or eligibility criteria were not met. The auditors suspected fraud in 20 cases. In total, the EU's regular expenditure amounted to 191.2 billion euros last year, plus 48 billion euros from the coronavirus recovery package.
In their report, the auditors also warned of "increasing financial risks for the EU budget due to record levels of debt", which are primarily attributable to Community bonds for coronavirus aid. Furthermore, the aid for Ukraine is an additional burden on the budget.
