The EU accounts have errors in its expenditure payments, but that is to be expected in any large organisation. While the amounts of money are large, it is a small per cent of expenditure.
Some of the payments will be fraudulent, such as when British farmers were claiming for non existant sheep which came to light during the foot and mouth outbreak. There will be other scams going on now.
But that does not make the EU budget illegal. It does not mean the accounts have not been signed off by the auditors, because they have.
// It’s that time of year again when the European Union budget is subject to scrutiny. Every year the budget is audited by the independent European Court of Auditors. Every year for the past seven years the Auditors have signed off the accounts as being reliable and accurate. And every year, British media have claimed that the EU accounts haven’t been passed by the auditors at all.
The fact is that, contrary to the convincing assertions by some UK media, the EU accounts have been passed by the independent auditors every year since 2007 as accurate, legal, regular and reliable. Furthermore, the EU has no debt or borrowings and the books are always balanced every year. (From 1994 to 2004, the EU budget was subject to cash-based accounting. Improved accruals-based accounting was introduced in 2005. The European Court of Auditors gave qualified approval to accounts until 2006, and unqualified approval - 'clean' opinion - since 2007.)
It’s true that the auditors strongly criticised EU expenditure for having 4.7% of errors – these were essentially administrative mistakes, and specifically not fraud – but then, all government accounts across the world have a percentage of managerial errors. For example, in some recent years, the US government accounts had error rates higher than 5% - worse than the EU. In the UK, some government department budgets have error rates bigger than the EU budget. For example, according to the National Audit Office, Housing Benefit fraud and error has increased to 5.8%. //
http://www.britishinfluence.org/it_s_the_british_media_that_needs_auditing
The EU accounts have errors in its expenditure payments, but that is to be expected in any large organisation. While the amounts of money are large, it is a small per cent of expenditure.
Some of the payments will be fraudulent, such as when British farmers were claiming for non existant sheep which came to light during the foot and mouth outbreak. There will be other scams going on now.
But that does not make the EU budget illegal. It does not mean the accounts have not been signed off by the auditors, because they have.