Accounts Shamble

EURO COMMISSION £70bn ACCOUNTS SHAMBOLIC AND SHAMEFUL

North West Conservative Euro MP David Sumberg is expressing grave concern after, for the 11th year running, the European Court of Auditors failed to give a ‘positive statement of assurance’ on the European Commission's (EC) accounts for 2004 or to sign off EU accounts that amount to nearly £70bn.

Speaking from Brussels Mr Sumberg said he is utterly exasperated as 'yet again' the Auditor's annual report criticizes the internal procedures and control measures exercised by the Commission. It listed numerous examples of misspent monies and errors it found in the process of its audit.

"Hard working North West families will be shocked that such an enormous sum of taxpayers cash, including their own, is so shockingly administered by a public body as powerful as the EC,' he said. "The fact that this is the 11th year running the EC's accounts have not been signed off by the Auditors is truly appalling. A full and thorough inquiry is urgently required to ensure it never happens again. If the EC was a private company its Directors would have been disqualified and thrown in jail years ago.”

Mr Sumberg said he is staggered Tony Blair has failed to protest about the shambolic state of the accounts given the fact that Britain currently has the Presidency of the EU and is one of the biggest contributors to the EU budget giving around £4bn-a-year. (See 'Note:' below)

”The Auditors report states that the Commission does not have effective controls or systems to make sure our money is spent as it should be - in fact the Auditors state that these controls are so bad that they couldn't "provide an unqualified opinion" on over 90% of the whole budget.”

”It is astounding that the British government refuses even to question the Commission about these accounts. Worse than that it has now put the British budget rebate on the table and so is looking to tip billions more of UK taxpayers' money into the leaky bucket that is the EU accounts."

Note:

The six biggest net contributors to the EU are -- Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands.This year they demanded that the budget be capped at 815 billion euros. However earlier this year under Luxembourg's presidency of the EU it proposed an overall budget for the EU in a range from 865 billion euros to 900 billion euros.