The auditors usually find far more mismanagement at the EU than is true of its individual member states. This year is no exception, with the audit again showing that more than five percent of all EU payments were, in one way or an other, mismanaged. The report is the work of an entirely independent, Luxembourg-based Court of Auditors. The audit report is made public first to the EU's Parliament, which considers it in detail for a full six months before also recommending action. Its goes as well, of course, to the EU's Executive Commission, the main subject of the audit, which handles almost all of the EU's pay-outs and is responsible for most misuse of funds.
Member states get the report, too.
But analysts say that most members are quite happy with the present administrative looseness in EU disbursements. That's because it allows them to receive tens of thousands of millions of dollars annually in agricultural subsidies and regional funding in a manner to which they have grown fondly accustomed. Britain, which takes over the EU's presidency in five weeks, is an exception to most members' contentment with the present porous expenditure system. She promised that her government would treat the reduction of fraud and waste as a prime aim of its six-month presidential term. How that can be done without totally revamping the EU subsidy system, a basic reform the Union has so far been reluctant to make, is another question.