Brussels, 05/11/2002 (Agence Europe) - "Our message to the Member States is simple: spend taxpayers' money properly - or we claim it back". It was in such terms that Franz Fischler, European Agriculture Commissioner, presented the European Commission's decision, on Tuesday, to proceed to recovery of EUR 86.36 million in misspent money under CAP.
The money is to be recovered because of inadequate control procedures or non-compliance with EU rules on agricultural expenditure. While Member States are responsible for paying out and checking virtually all expenditure under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the Commission is required to ensure that Member States have made correct use of the funds, by carrying out an audit allowing the recovery of sums paid out without sufficient guarantees as to the legitimacy of the payments made or the reliability of the control and verification system in the Member State concerned.
The decision taken on Tuesday by the Commission provides for recovery of funds from the following Member States: Austria, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The main corrections concern the following amounts: EUR 36.7 charged to Greece concerning the deficient control system in the animal premia sector and for shortcomings in the aid paid to orange growers; - EUR 27.4 million charged to Spain for not carrying out key and secondary checks in the arable sector, unsatisfactory control in the olive oil sector and in the animal premia sector; - and EUR 14.1 million charged to France concerning anomalies found in the special premium for bovines and the suckler cow premium. The acceptance of certain cereal stocks and the storage conditions in certain warehouses also did not comply with Community legislation.