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After the latest EU Court of Auditors report revealed graft and corruption across institutions of the European Union, the EU Observer published a commentary by Richard Corbett, which is in effect a reply to the eurosceptics.
I wanted to mention it here, because it offers the counterargument (i.e. that EU corruption is not as bad as they make it out to be).
For example, Corbett writes:
For starters, the CoA, for the first time, states that the EU’s accounts give a “fair representation …in all material respects” of its finances. In other words, the accounts themselves were signed off, but the CoA could not give a “statement of assurance” that all the actual financial transactions of EU money had been done in accordance with the rules.
He goes on to say that the EU circumstance is hardly unique. The U.S. federal budget and the U.K.’s Department of Work and Pensions have not received the equivalent positive assurance for 10 and 15 years respectively.
Moreover argues Corbett:
It should also be borne in mind that the European CoA works to more stringent criteria than most…Sir John Bourn, former head of the UK National Audit Office, has said that if he had used the same system as the CoA, he would have had to disqualify the whole of UK government expenditure.
I suppose that’s comforting from the EU perspective, although I’m not sure this is something that the U.K. taxpayers would be happy to hear. Anyway, read the whole thing if you care here.
