UKIP condemns hopeless EU financial control as auditors say tens of billions have been spent “in error” from rural development funds.
Jonathan Arnott, UKIP MEP for the North East and member of the European Parliament Budgetary Control Committee, said: “The European Commission has again shown it is incapable of finding a way to ensure taxpayers’ money is spent properly. For eurocrats, the failure to spend a billion-plus euros according to the rules is business as usual.” Mr Arnott said while one “could expect any multi-billion euro operation to have a rate of error in how money is spent, the auditors found that the rate of error in spending EU rural development funds in 2011-2013 was ‘unacceptably high.’ In fact, the rate was 8.2 percent, or four times the maximum rate of error that would be tolerated in private enterprise.”
“In this report the auditors calculated the rate of error just for three
years. If calculated across the entire €150bn (£110bn) 2007-2013 rural
development budget, this would indicate that €1.23bn (£900m) has been spent by
member states without adhering to the rules. The Commission is responsible for
‘shared management’ of these funds, so the eurocrats must share the blame for
the failed oversight and gross errors made in how these billions were
spent.”
