Vitor Caldeira, president of the European Court of Auditors, said the 28 member states, which are responsible for allocating 80 per cent of the funds, needed to take more care in their spending.

“They need to pay more attention to getting the kind of results citizens expect to see from spending EU money,” he said.

Since 2007, the EU’s auditors have signed off the bloc’s accounts because they can trace where the money goes. However, they have noted that mistakes in allocation have remained persistently above a targeted 2 per cent threshold.

ECA: EU must focus on getting better results from its spending, say EU Auditors 

In its annual report on the EU budget published today, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) warns that the budget system is too focused on just getting funds spent and needs to place more emphasis on achieving results. As independent auditor, the ECA signed off the 2013 accounts of the European Union, but stresses that the management of EU spending is not yet good enough overall - either at EU level or in the Member States. 

Throughout the 2007 to 2013 spending period, say the EU Auditors, the priority was given to spending the money - ‘use it or lose it’ - rather than to achieving good results. For instance, the choice of projects to receive EU funds focused first on disbursing the EU money available, secondly on complying with the rules, and only then - and to a limited extent - on results and impact. 

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European Commission: Georgieva's peech before the European Parliament Committee on Budgetary Control

"The report presented by the Court relates to the year 2013, the last year of the previous financial framework. It is particularly important, as 2013 saw a record of around €148 billion in payments made. We are grateful for the comprehensive task which the Court once again has accomplished and we welcome the findings and recommendations expressed in this report, which the Commission shares, aside from a very limited number of exceptions. The constructive recommendations will, as in the past, help the Commission to further improve, in the common goal of better financial management.

Although this year's most likely error rate for payments is still above the materiality threshold of 2%, I am pleased that the Court's audit findings show that last years' trend of increasing error rates has been stopped.

This year the Court detected a most likely error of 4,7%, as compared to 4.8% in 2012. I hope that the Commission's efforts are starting to pay off.

I am pleased that the Court concludes as in the past that the accounts are free from material misstatements and that the error rate for revenues and administrative expenditure are far below the Court's materiality threshold of 2%, that commitments in all areas of expenditure receive a positive opinion."

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