Parliament calls for reassessment of EU spending

The success of EU funding should be measured less in terms of error rates and more in terms of project progress, according to the European Parliament.

Following the release of the European Court of Auditors’ annual report, several MEPs said that there was too much focus on misspending in discussions around EU expenditures. The error rate for EU spending in 2013 dropped slightly compared to 2012, to 4.7 per cent. However, this number does not reflect wider problems that EU projects might suffer from, the MEPs stated.

“Payment irregularities in a project are usually just the tip of the iceberg,” said Ingeborg Grässle, a German MEP for the conservative European People’s Party group. “Most likely there are underlying problems in its performance as well.”