Britannia Radio

Connivance or Widespread Incompetence - Which Explains EU Accounts Fiasco?

Even before the EUâ?Ts so-called â?~independentâ?T Court of Auditors failed to sign off the annual accounts yet again it had become obvious that the misuse of public funds had become intolerable. 

There can be only two logical explanations - connivance or widespread incompetence.  Both are insufferable.  Either is sufficient for Britain to leave..

What follows is my speech on the accounts, delivered 20 November 2008 (with apologies for delay in posting)

"The EC's accounts can never be signed off until and unless at least two major underlying problems are resolved.  Neither is new and both have been wilfully ignored for years.

First, there is no certainty about the opening balances when the accounting system changed in 2005.  Huge adjustments a year later made it obvious no reconciliation between the old and new systems had been possible.

Secondly, the problem of so-called "shared management" - the distribution of public funds to recipients who are then held responsible for both using and accounting for them.  Even internal auditors in member states admit the system is impossible to operate.

All we ever hear from the Court and the Commissioner is well-intentioned talk of improvements coming soon.  We heard it again today â?" â?omanaging riskâ?, â?oerror ratesâ? â?" nothing but complacency.

We have heard it for years, and the reality is that nothing much changes.  The public is losing patience - and rightly so. 

Tinkering with the deckchairs on this particular Titanic does nothing to plug the holes in the bottom.

Those holes are already big, and they're growing.  We still have olive groves in the Aegean Sea if Greek figures are to be believed.  And thousands of acres of non-existent tobacco plantations in Italy.  While the misuse of EU funds in Bulgaria is reported to be out of control.

In Turkish-held northern Cyprus 259 million euros of public money is being handed over for economic development. But the EU office in Nicosia admits it cannot monitor or control it - because we don't officially recognise the Turkish regime!

Some of that money has just paid for new pavements in the booming holiday resort of Kyrenia, where the casinos do a roaring trade all day every day, but the local regime chooses not to raise sufficient taxes to pay for their own local improvements.

"Let the EU pay for them, if they're stupid enough to do so" - that's their attitude.

Yet that money could have been used to clear the 25,000 mines still separating north from south, an essential pre-requisite to economic development - which is what the 259 million was for in the first place.

Not only are the EU's accounts unacceptable - so are some of the judgments about how public money should be used."

(Ends)