Lening bij Europese Commissie: wordt gewoon afgeboekt

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Lening bij Europese Commissie: wordt gewoon afgeboekt werd gestart door katertje

Posted 12 jaren 3 maanden geleden #30178



Where have all the unaccounted billions gone?

• 4.6 billion Euro of payments from the EU budget – taxpayers’ money – are ‘irregular’ according to a report released today by the European Court of Auditors. I sat in Committee this morning (10.11.2011) where the report was presented.

This figure equates to around 25% of the UK’s annual contribution to EU coffers.
The Court of Auditors Report on the 2010 budget shows that ‘irregularities’ – or possible fraud, in layman’s terms – are on the rise from their previous 2009 report.
The combined error rate for payments for 2010 is 3.7% or 4.6 Billion Euro.
Cohesion funding, which includes structural funds (or aid) to countries, of which Greece received some 60 Billion since joining the Euro, was worst affected with an error rate of 7.7% (3.6 Billion Euro). Next, Agriculture, the largest recipient of payments from the EU budget, had an error rate of 2.3% (1.6 Billion Euro).

Most alarmingly, in the samples used by the Court of Auditors around 50% showed ‘errors’. Additionally, the auditors raised the alarm over the lack of supervision on advance payments which they consider to be out of control.
Despite repeated assurances from the European Commission and pressure from the European Council, the way the EU makes payments from its Budget is getting worse not better. This should send alarm bells ringing across Member States governments. However, I fear there is a business as usual mentality, where ‘irregularities’ are tolerated despite the huge amounts of money involved that cannot be properly accounted for.
This mentality is not helped by the terminology used by the Auditors who refer to the payments being ‘partially effective’. Such contrived language is an insult to the taxpayer whose money has effectively disappeared as the Auditors cannot get to the bottom of where it has gone.
In any private enterprise heads would roll and the shareholders would demand change at the top. Doubtless the Commission will again try to trumpet these figures as a success. They are anything but.


Over de fraude en corruptie binnen de Europese Commissie heeft Marta Andreasen van UKIP een boek geschreven.

“Brussels Laid Bare” by Marta Andreasen: Story told in full in her new book published this month by St. Edward’s Press

She was to discover a shocking lack of financial controls, especially with regard to computerised systems where numbers in “reports often changed from day to day”. Some information was only on spreadsheets “on which anyone could make changes [and if] manipulated [would] leave no electronic trail” (page 14 and page 48). She describes the EU funds as “an open till waiting to be robbed” where “billions go walkabout.” (Page 127). For example, “the opening balance for the EU accounts for 2001 didn’t match the closing balance for the 2000 accounts. There was a gap of almost 200 million euros. These accounts were actually published in the official journal of the European Union”. “When I asked my staff to explain the discrepancy, I was informed that these were loans given to third parties and then written off.” (Both Page 15). She also learned that senior officials were authorised to hand out huge amounts of tax-payers’ money without any proper records being kept which would not be acceptable in any other context. “It was not just one specific case that concerned me, but the whole notion that the system could operate in this way: that money, not approved in the budget, could be advanced to anyone, be called a loan and then be written off when the recipient failed to return it”. (Page 15).

“The main reason that I continue my fight is that I don’t want my children … to live in thrall to the EU: a layer of government that, in my view, is not only unnecessary, but lawless, corrupt, mistaken, undemocratic, bureaucratic, over-regulated and, ultimately, unworkable.” (Page 123)
www.stedwardspress.co.uk/Press_release.html
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