The European Parliament's budgetary control committee is in the final stages of drafting its report on the 2009 discharge procedure into sound financial management under the leadership of Jorgo Chatzimarkakis (FDP, Germany), rapporteur. This week the committee will complete its hearings with all Commissioners and their services and begin to draw some conclusions.

"Member States are actually preventing a more efficient use of EU funds," said Chatzimarkakis. "This is one of the conclusions we can draw from our enquiries. There seems to be no political will on the part of national governments to improve their accountability for the use of EU funds in their own country. We are ready to work closely together with the Commission to insist on the publication of national declarations signed by a government minister or national auditing service to the effect that EU money has been correctly spent".

"If Member States are not prepared to go along with this then the European Commission should be prepared to interrupt or suspend payments for affected programmes until they are satisfied with the controls in place."

"The present system can no longer be justified. Between 75-80% of the EU-funds are administered directly by the Member States. In many cases this money is certainly not efficiently spent. What is worse, the European Court of Auditors has established that in cohesion policy 30% of the errors could have been detected by the Member States at a very early stage themselves. It is only years later that we learn that a project was not eligible, no European added value has been created and that the funds were not even paid back."

"The time for the EU to be little more than a self-service shop for easy money must end."

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