The Court of Auditors, the EU's own institution,
has refused to pass those accounts for the twentieth year running.
The European Union’s auditors have estimated that one in 20 payments made from the EU’s 2013 budget was affected by error. The auditors put the overall error rate for payments at 4.7%, marginally down on the 2012 budget when its estimate was 4.8%.
More details on the
EUObserver:
Almost €7 billion of the EU budget was illegally spent in 2013, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) revealed on Wednesday (5 November), as it declined to sign off EU spending for the 20th consecutive year.
Although the error rate of misspent funds fell fractionally to 4.7 per cent from 4.8 per cent in 2012, this is still well above the 2 per cent threshold under which ECA could classify payments as error-free. Spending on administration was the only part of the budget to fall within the threshold, with an estimated 1 per cent error rate.
In total, EU spending in 2013 reached €148.5 billion.
Is this going to make the slightest difference to the people who have mis-spent our money consistently? Or to the ever higher sums that are demanded from the long-suffering taxpayer? Not on your life.
It doesn't mater how fast you chase the European Commission, you never catch up with the money.
ReplyDeleteThis can be expressed as EU = mc20.
Where EU is the immovable object, mc = mass corruption and 20 is the number of years that the auditors have been unable to sign off the European Union accounts.
The European Union and the EU Commission draws upon its LEGAL BASIS on budgetary maters from Article 268 to 280 of the EC Treaty. As the European Union has not performed or been in legal compliance for 20 years we should now withdraw from the European Union using the provision of Article 61 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
Article 61 Supervening impossibility of performance
A party may invoke the impossibility of performing a treaty as a ground for terminating or withdrawing from it if the impossibility results from the permanent disappearance or destruction of an object indispensable for the execution of the treaty. If the impossibility is temporary, it may be invoked only as a ground for suspending the operation of the treaty.
20 years of non compliance feels fairly permanent to me.
Can I put this up as a blog posting with due accreditation, Anoneumouse? Some people do not bother to read the comments and this is worth reading by everyone.
DeleteYes, no problem
ReplyDelete