Brussels, 10/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 10 November, the European Commission was generally pleased with the Court of Auditor's report on the 2010 budget, except with regard to cohesion policy for which the Court spoke of “systemic” problems in Spain and Italy.
Bombarded with questions from members of the EP budgetary control committee on the significant rate of error (7.7%) found in 2010 in the field of cohesion policy (see article above), Algirdas Semeta, the commissioner responsible for the audit and for tackling fraud, said that it is first and foremost the member states that should resolve these failings. “Fifty-eight percent of errors should be identified at the first level of control carried out in member states. This means that this first level of control is not sufficiently effective”, the commissioner said. The Commission is making an effort to train those responsible for carrying out controls in the different countries, Semeta said. “A great deal more must be done at the level of member states”, he added.
The three countries with the most errors in the field of cohesion policy in 2010 are Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic (two-thirds of errors identified by the Court), the commissioner explained, saying the errors concern seven programmes in particular. He noted that there is a zero error rate in Poland. The commissioner admitted that “systemic problems” existed in Spain and Italy, and that these problems should be tackled. “Finally,” he went on to say, “it is up to the states to correct these problems”.
Upon reading the Court of Auditors' report on the 2010 budget, the Commission considers that there have been considerable improvements in a number of areas. The positive trend last year (on the 2009 budget) has continued, except for cohesion policy, Semeta said. For EU spending, the overall error rate is once again below 4%. This means that the vast majority (at least 96%) of total payments made in 2010 were free from quantifiable error.
The Commission notes that the results for policies directly managed by the Commission keep improving, according to the Court's report, with a continuous fall in the error rate in areas such as research, external aid, development and enlargement. In agriculture, the situation remains “stable” with the level of error close to the threshold set by the Court. Direct farm payments, which accounted for €39.7 billion were free from material error.
The error rate for cohesion policy nonetheless still stands well below the levels reported from 2006 to 2008. This increase on last year is partly due to the fact that many programmes started in previous years had to be paid for from 2010.
Last year, the Commission on several occasions used the different correcting measures available to it. In 2010, it suspended payments worth €2.15 billion in the European Regional Development Fund alone. The suspension of funds for the European Social Fund amounted to €255 million in 2010. (LC/transl.jl).