(12 in a row)
According to the BBC’s Stephen Mulvey, “reports saying that the auditors “refused to sign off the accounts” are misleading.”
Meanwhile, The Financial Times reports from Brussels “Auditors refuse to sign off Brussels accounts”
(The relevant EU Commissioner says “I can assure the EU’s citizens that the money is well under control.”
That’s what I’m afraid about.)
The BBC reports: “the European Commission has made unprecedented efforts to calm down the media storm that usually accompanies the auditors’ report”
Don’t you love how on certain issues the BBC is so far above the rest of the media, while on others they’re quite happy to join the melee?
The FT reports a stream of criticisms and excuses on the EU’s part as “a dispute erupted”.
The Beeb certainly made sure the Commission had a big chunky say in this article in response to those ‘attacking’ auditors.
The EU is exactly the kind of oarasitical organisation that the BBC loves,but with the EU why the British Broadcasting Corporation? Time for abolition.
No problem, just change it to Biased Broadcasting Corporation.
I note that Tim Worstall independently shares your low opinion of the BBC piece concerned.
It’s nice to see the Public Accounts Committee getting its teeth into the £23.17 which the Duchy of Cornwall is apparently excused from paying the Exchequer. Is there a possibility that our rulers have their priorities slightly askew?
Umbongo asks:
“Is there a possibility that our rulers have their priorities slightly askew?”
Or, perhaps, they are tacitly admitting they are absolutely powerless to do a damn thing about the EU, to which they have surrendered all powers, so are pretendingto look busy by fiddling with the petty cash?
Here’s what Margot Wallstrom says about this in her blog:
Some readers have asked me to comment on the Court of Auditors latest report on the Commission‘s accounts. I will be glad to do so.
This is a much misunderstood subject, although I think some people are only too happy to misunderstand it. I see on the internet lots of the usual headlines from some quarters about “Euro-fraud, year 12”, “False Accounting” etc.
The fact is that this year, the Court of Auditors HAS given, as it did in previous years, a clean bill of health on the EU accounts. The Court does not say that part of the EU budget was spent fraudulently. It says it has spotted errors (not fraud!) of various kinds in the sample of payments analysed. Some of these errors (e.g. a delayed payment, or an incomplete documentation) do not have any financial impact on the EU budget at all.
The BBC actually puts the problem quite well at the beginning of one of its articles:
“For 12 years the European Union’s auditors have refused to endorse the spending of large parts of the EU budget. To many European citizens, it is a mystery why such a state of affairs has been allowed to continue for so long.”
The Court gives a separate opinion on whether ALL payments have been correctly processed, i.e. paid on time, the invoice properly signed, amounts paid correct, whether the best and cheapest suppliers have been chosen, etc. The Court says it can only give positive assurance on some spending, not on the whole budget, as it has found errors in SOME of the payments under scrutiny.
Many experts say that the test in the Treaties is so strict that the EU can NEVER get a positive statement of assurance from the Court of Auditors. Sir John Bourn, the UK‘s Comptroller & Auditor recently said:
“There are some very considerable points of difference between the audit requirements in the European Union and the United Kingdom. The Court aims for a single statement of assurance, one verdict on the whole of the expenditure of the Commission; a test which will be very difficult actually to meet. In the UK there are 500 accounts representing the expenditure of British Central Government. In the last year I qualified 13 of the 500. If I had to operate the EU system, then, because I qualify 13 accounts, I might have to qualify the whole of British Central Government expenditure.”
It is a fact that 76% of the EU spending is actually already delegated to Member States. Most of the errors found by the Court concerned EU funds under NATIONAL management.
“If the European Court of Auditors were to audit the European Union accounts, as we would all like them to do so, they would need an army of accountants to do that. They do not have it and it is very unlikely that anybody is ever going to give them the money to stack up to those levels. Consequently, they need the Member States to do the work within the Member States and that is just not happening.” • Terry Wynn, British MEP, public hearing in the House of Lords, 27 June 2006
Of course some people will never be convinced, because they simply have no interest in being convinced, but for the benefit of all the neutrals out there, these are the facts about the audit of the Commission‘s handling of EU funds (and I make no apologies for copying some of the material which my colleague Siim Kallas has been issuing to the media).
http://weblog.jrc.ec.europa.eu/page/wallstrom?entry=the_commission_s_accounts
I think you’ll find “Joe” is the moderator on the fragrant Ms Wallstrom’s ‘blog’.
In other words your comments have caught the eye of the EU apparatchiks.
Be afraid – be very afraid…
Why do europhiles almost always stoop to attacking the motives of people who may well have genuine concerns?
Funny isn’t it that it’s taken 12 years for this argument to be made. You would have thought, if it’s genuine, that 12 long years ago some genius in Brussels would have told us serfs out here what has actually happened with the accounts and that the EU had set its standards so impossibly (and typically) high that getting a clean bill of health from the auditors is impossible. Sorry, maybe I’m becoming cynical, but it’s too late to convince this sceptic that this argument is a runner.
BTW the quoted statement from Wynn (who, because he’s an MEP is supposed to be totally disinterested – as if) means that because, say, Vodaphone didn’t have every one of its petty cash vouchers approved by the auditors then Vodaphone’s accounts are somehow open to question. No large concern whether commercial or governmental has “an army” of workers auditing the accounts: they use what’s called sampling and have done for at least the last 60 years.
Ed Thomas
You are probably more than averagely well-informed.
You take a close interest in all sorts of issues.
But tell me – hand on heart – how much of this stuff did you know before you read Stephen Mulvey’s piece or the FT article (which contain much the same info from exactly the same source)?
Did you know about the Sir John Bourn point….i.e. that if the UK used the same system as the EU, he’d have to qualify the UK Govt’s accounts?
Did you know that most of the errors found by the Court of Auditors were found in spending under national management rather than in Commission spending?
“have also declared the EU accounts to be “reliable” This means that the European Commission has accurately recorded all transactions, assets and liabilities”
“The problems the auditors have exposed have been with the “legality and regularity” of the transactions underlying those accounts.”
So everything is OK, because they have recorded all the illegal transactions!??
Amazing
If it is the case that most of the ‘errors’ in the accounts of the EU are attributable to the member states, let’s have a closer look at the members. How about Greece as a starter, then move on to Italy. Does anyone remember the ‘accounts’ which enabled these countries to join the Euro? Belgium would be another interesting set of accounts.
The above are countries to which EU supporters want us to weld our national finances. It’s a bit like a wealthy person, say Sir Paul McCartney, marrying a spiteful gold-digger without a pre-nuptial agreement. The EU’s supporters would say that it would never happen – oops!
Actually, JR, hand on heart, I’ve been reading about this story for a couple of years now. I’ve been reading Richard North for over a year at http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/ and I actually paid attention when Kinnock and co. resigned en masse over this issue.
See here: http://www.iht.com/articles/1999/03/17/eu.2.t_3.php
Note how the response there was to attack the messenger.
It’s the same basic issue, and it seems that having failed the test the EU wants to change the pass mark or the nature of the test.
Allan@Aberdeen
If Finance Ministers across Europe were held to the same standards as Finance Directors in business, most of them would be in prison.
Pete, that’s exactly right. But the hoo-hah over the EU’s finances is directing attention away from those on the rung below, and Italy, Greece etc are getting away with it. Maybe the Hungarian PM will be brought down – he admitted his deceptions.
why only Itlay and Greece? what about errors found in the EU spending under the British gov responsibility?
Kaletsky in The Times today has a great piece about how the euro is stuffing the Eastern economies, not to mention the Italian, to the point at which one can see the emergence of the long-foreseen euro-driven democratic crisis. Wonder if the Beeb’ll cover it?