SOME £3.6 billion of the £61 billion EU expenditure in 1995 is subject to "substantial error", the Court of Auditors will tell the European Parliament today. The court finds a "substantial error" rate of 5.9 per cent in the Union's accounts but blames the majority of the errors on accounting and supervision of EU funds in the member states.
The discrepancies reflect a failure to account properly for or document funding and unauthorised expenditure, in addition to actual fraud on the EU. They are reported in the "Statement of Assurance" given by the court to MEPs to accompany its annual report, the details of which were published in The Irish Times last Friday.
The statement finds that overall, the Union's accounts are reliable but extrapolates an error rate from a small representative study. The largest discrepancies arise in the agricultural and the structural fund areas.
In the former case, the errors arise predominantly from ineligible expenditure - misdeclaration of acreages or animal numbers - and from the declaration of expenditure not yet incurred. The principal structural funding weaknesses arose from inclusion of projects that are technically ineligible for EU funding.
The court's report also makes possible a first global breakdown of EU payments to Ireland last year. The EU's net contribution to the Irish economy was £1,355.8 million - the result of gross payments of £2,007.3 million - some 4 per cent of EU expenditure - less EU revenue from Ireland of £651.5 million - or 1.1 per cent of EU "own resources" revenue.
