You do know that if there were no official sources, it would be a complete fabrication; the sort of fabrication that got BoJo sacked from the Times?
I was also checking whether you had read your own articles, and it appears you hadn't; otherwise you'd know that they too point back to the... wait for it... official EU press releases and documents. Misquoted; partially presented; at times not pointing to the complete picture; poorly referenced; lacking context; and padded with leading language; but they were there for those who could bother to more than copy and paste snippets. Hence why I linked more information and complete documents pertinent to the discussion and my points, going against your fantasy. But why believe me -- even the good ol' Metro managed to balance its introduction with something more than vague blogosphere noise.
From your first article:
However, Professor Iain Begg, from the European Institute at the London School of Economics, said the accounting processes may not be too lax, but too tight.
‘The Court of Auditors’ report is an annual ritual in which EU spending is routinely found to have shortcomings,’ he said. ‘One of the reasons is that the standard of accountability is very tough, much more so than in individual countries, including the UK.
‘This, rather than the “culture of the EU”, is the principal explanation. In practice, much EU spending is so tightly controlled that it creates onerous burdens for recipients. Most of the problems tend to be the fault of the member states, which implement EU policies, rather than Brussels as such. The logical solution is to demand that those same member states are much more stringent in their procedures.
‘The UK is not exempt, even if the problems are typically worse in countries like Italy where weak or corrupt public administration compounds the problem.’
Aidas Palubinskas, from the European Court of Auditors, said it is independent and described the error rate as ‘relatively stable from year to year’. He said the errors highlighted in its report were ‘examples of inefficiency, but not necessarily of waste’.
Don’t tell me you would actually argue for having laxer standards? Why should we leave an organisation that sets a standard above that of its members, and holds them accountable in public when shortcomings are identified?
Put as a more local analogy: Would identifiable inefficiencies at Whitehall, re regional funding allocation and distribution, be a sufficient reason for Scotland to leave the Union? Likewise, should Whitehall ignore standards it sets for the UK if Scotland finds the burden of keeping up too much work?
Here’s the press release they were slanting, in full anyway:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides...ence=20131105STO23802&secondRef=0&language=EN
Calling for further action, as you’d expect. So what happened in the end? We can find out from the most recent National Audit Office report re Financial Management of the EU; non-EU enough for you?
Audit results
• The ECA concluded that the 2014 EU accounts were true and fair. They have been true and fair since 2007.
• The ECA reached an adverse opinion on the regularity and legality of EU payments. The estimated level of error for 2014 was 4.4%, above the ECA’s materiality threshold of 2%. Errors relating to payments in 2014 mean that this threshold has now been breached for the last 21 years. The ECA reported that revenue in 2014 was legal and regular.
• The ECA’s estimated level of error represents money that was not used, or administered, in accordance with EU regulations and national rules. In 2014, the principal sources of errors included ineligible costs included in cost claims, serious errors in public procurement, and incorrect declarations of area by farmers. The ECA’s estimated level of error is not an estimate of fraud.
So that’s where the Brexit bugbear was all along: the self-imposed regulatory target that’s well above the member states average! Hardly ‘not cleared for 19 years’. Even so, the ECA, verified by NAO, recorded an improvement of bringing the error rate down by a quarter in the reporting period, and the EU is converging to the mutually agreed, demanding target, with more reforms on the way! Cutting red tape as they go, urged on by the UK no less!
Not perfect, as I said, but getting there. Considering the return on trade we get back from the EU is several orders of magnitude of our contribution, and indeed is higher than the entire EU budget; I think we’ve got a good deal; a deal which fully covers its costs; and which, with sound policy and our active involvement, can only improve. It's also worth repeating that the organisation itself, when the mishaps by member states are excluded, has excellent accounts; which is why the tabloids and Brexiters do not attack them directly at institutional level, switching to the sovereignty argument instead to dodge the issue and the hypocrisy in their economic rectitude line.
Action to address errors
• The UK Committee of Public Accounts recommended in 2005 and 2009 that EU rules should be simplified to reduce errors.
• The ECA has recommended improvements in control systems at member state and EU levels, and further simplification of the rules, to reduce errors and enhance the results achieved from EU spending.
• In 2014 the European Commission (the Commission) and member states took corrective action to reduce the occurrence of errors by applying corrective measures in cases of irregular expenditure. If such corrections had not been applied, the ECA’s overall estimated level of error would have been 5.5% rather than 4.4%.
• The Commission has an action plan to pursue simplification, increase accountability and improve flexibility, as well as focus on results achieved from EU spending.
• A mid-term review of the current MFF is scheduled for the end of 2016. This will enable EU institutions to reassess priorities for the remaining years of the current MFF
Summary:
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/u...for-the-Committee-of-Public-Accounts-Summ.pdf
In full:
https://www.nao.org.uk/report/finan...riefing-for-the-committee-of-public-accounts/
And in case you’re still only skimming, do note that the EU is holding on to 60bn euros in commitments, which is the normal practice when the projects requesting funds have queries re their compliance raised; which is yet another example of the sort of reform that the cases in 07/08 demanded, and the tightening in standards that occured.
The EU: Accountable. Listening. Working. Tough standards and all. Unlike your Brexit pipe dream!
You really are laughable, Mulder.
