Check EU spending results, not just payment errors, says Parliament

The EU should check what EU funds spent in member states achieve, and not just that they are spent according to the rules, said MEPs debating the European Court of Auditors i (ECA) annual report on EU spending in 2013 in plenary session on Wednesday. Data from member states on how they spend EU funds are too often unreliable, they added. The overall error rate in 2013 was 4.7%, slightly down on 2012. 80% of all funds are spent in and by the member states.

"Why do we only talk about error rates? Why don't we examine what has been achieved with the funds in the past years?" asked Budgetary Control Committee i chair Ingeborg Grässle i (EPP i, DE), citing Roma integration and youth unemployment as two areas where money spent was not matched by results.

Although the estimated overall error rate dropped from 4.8% in 2012 to 4.7% in 2013, it is still well above the 2% threshold under which ECA could classify payments as error free.

While the European Commission is legally responsible for expenditure overall, about 80% of all EU funding is in fact managed and paid out locally by member states and their authorities. This spending is later reimbursed by the EU.

Unreliable data from member states

The Court's report showed that most errors occur in areas managed by member states, even though they had the information they needed to reject ineligible claims, prevent serious breaches of public procurement rules and detect incorrect declarations in agricultural areas.

"Significantly more could have been done by doing better checks before submitting claims for reimbursement", noted ECA President Vítor Manuel da Silva Caldeira, who presented the annual report in plenary session.

"The audit trail of auditing must reach all the way down to programme level," insisted Petri Sarvamaa i (EPP, FI).

Highest error rates still in regional and farm spending

The most error-prone areas are still regional policy (6.9% in 2013, up from 6.8% in 2012) and rural development (6.7% in 2013, down from 7.9% in 2012). Both areas are managed by the member states themselves.

In rural development spending, for which the budget was €13.7 billion, most errors were due to failures to respect eligibility requirements, while in regional policy, with a budget of €43.6 billion, there were serious errors in public procurement, reported the ECA. The error rate in agriculture spending, for which the budget was €45 billion in 2013, was 3.6%.

Background

The presentation of the annual report of the ECA in the Budgetary Control Committee on 5 November marked the formal launch of the “discharge” procedure, in which Parliament assesses whether EU money is spent correctly. Errors are unintentional mistakes in administration, which should not be equated with fraud.

Procedure: Budget discharge

Procedure Code:2014/2867(RSP)

Debate: Wednesday, 12 November

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REF. : 20141110IPR78125