European Union auditors say the EU misspent about
€7bn (£5.5bn) last year - that is, 4.7% of its annual budget.
The European
Union (EU) is a politico-economic union
of 28 member states that
are primarily located in Europe.
The EU operates through a system of supranational independent institutions and intergovernmental negotiated decisions by the
member states.
Institutions of the EU include
the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Council,
the Court of Justice of the
European Union, the European Central Bank, the Court of Auditors,
and the European Parliament.
The European
Parliament is elected every five years by EU citizens.
The €7bn is described as "errors" in
budget allocations, only part of which could be called fraud or waste.
The European Court of Auditors (ECA) said the
EU budget should be focused on achieving results rather than on "just
getting funds spent".
The report comes amid a row about EU budget surcharges, strongly disputed by
the UK, Italy and the Netherlands.
The two most error-prone spending areas in 2013 were
regional policy, including energy and transport (6.9% error rate) and rural
development, including environment, fisheries and health (6.7%), the auditors
said.
The figure is a marginal improvement on 2012, when
4.8% of the budget was misspent.
The ECA president, Vitor Caldeira, said the EU must
find more incentives to deliver value for money and improve long-term
forecasts, to curb budget waste.
"Just following the usual procedure will no
longer be enough," he said.
The European Commission says that in 2013 it managed
to correct or recover €3.4bn of misspent EU funds - almost half the total.
The Eurosceptic group that includes the British
Conservatives in the European Parliament urged the European Commission to
"get a grip" on the budget.
Ryszard Czarnecki, budget control spokesman for the
European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), said "European governments
are largely to blame for these failures, but the Commission is responsible for
the budget and needs to get a grip.
"[Commission] President Juncker has said he
wants the Commission to be more political.
He must realize that whatever
excuses the Commission makes for this annual failure, people are frustrated
that the auditors have not been able to give the accounts a clean bill of
health for 20 years."
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