It is for the fourteenth year running, we read, that the Court of Auditors has refused to sign off on the EU accounts. The EU don’t know or can’t prove where a large part of the £70 billion a year budget goes. I suppose that since this happens every year we have grown to accept it.
They will say that it is not in Brussels, but in member countries, that the money goes missing, but this is no defence. And it is not simply that some fairly trivial paperwork is missing or a system not set up.
This could not be happening without fraud on a massive scale.
For fourteen years! About a fifth of this £70 bn is contributed by Britain, so we are condoning it, at the very least.
In many ways this is a disaster of accountability rather than accounting. Every year they say they will improve but never do anything to clear the matter up: they really don’t believe that we, the public, have any right to interfere in their spending. It is high time we replaced them with people who do.
There is only one solution. David Cameron must declare that if the accounts are not properly audited within a reasonable period – say 2012 – he, as Prime Minister, will withdraw funding from the EU. He should encourage other realists, the Czechs (who hold the rotating presidency after December), the Poles, the Irish, to do the same.
Otherwise it will simply carry on.
They will say that it is not in Brussels, but in member countries, that the money goes missing, but this is no defence. And it is not simply that some fairly trivial paperwork is missing or a system not set up.
This could not be happening without fraud on a massive scale.
For fourteen years! About a fifth of this £70 bn is contributed by Britain, so we are condoning it, at the very least.
In many ways this is a disaster of accountability rather than accounting. Every year they say they will improve but never do anything to clear the matter up: they really don’t believe that we, the public, have any right to interfere in their spending. It is high time we replaced them with people who do.
There is only one solution. David Cameron must declare that if the accounts are not properly audited within a reasonable period – say 2012 – he, as Prime Minister, will withdraw funding from the EU. He should encourage other realists, the Czechs (who hold the rotating presidency after December), the Poles, the Irish, to do the same.
Otherwise it will simply carry on.
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