In presenting the European Court of Auditors’ report to MEPs, Vítor Caldeira, the president of the court, was careful to stress that the error rates were not confined to particular member states. But several MEPs on the budgetary-control committee pointed out that the bulk of spending errors had been detected in just three member states – Spain, Italy and Greece.
“We can see very clearly that it is a very few countries that discredit the EU’s structural and agricultural support,” said Markus Pieper, a German centre-right MEP who is drafting the Parliament’s report on the EU’s spending in 2012. He called on the Court to draw up country-specific reports to identify the causes and said that member states with consistently high error rates should be put under special monitoring.
However, the Court’s report chides many member states. On farm spending, the UK is criticised because administration and control systems in England and Northern Ireland for farm aid were “not effective”. In both England and Northern Ireland, the systems used to assess whether particular plots of land qualify for aid recorded forest areas that are ineligible as permanent pasture, which is eligible. In Luxembourg, the system was judged to be only “partially effective”. In Germany, the paying agency for Brandenburg and Berlin awarded a no-bid contract for an information technology system and maintenance worth €2.2 million through direct negotiation, in breach of EU rules, as did 11 other regions in Germany.
Of the €138.6 billion spent by the EU in 2012, around 80% was jointly managed by the European Commission and the member states, notably in regional and farm aid. The report criticises member states that claimed reimbursements from the EU budget even though they were aware of irregularities in the projects or programmes for which the reimbursements were claimed.
The auditors’ report on 2012 spending is the last to be delivered to the second Barroso administration, but before the European Parliament elections, MEPs will take to task various European commissioners. Dacian Ciolos, the European commissioner for agriculture and rural development, is bound to be in the firing line, since he has two problem areas in his portfolio: market and direct support in agriculture was among the better-performing areas last year, but its error has risen by 0.9% since then, while rural development was, and remains, the worst performer. Johannes Hahn, the European commissioner for regional policy, will be questioned about the persistently high error rate for regional policy. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the commissioner for research, and Algirdas Šemeta, the commissioner whose responsibilities include audit, might also expect some discomfort.