Bulgaria, Romania Top EU Spending Frauds Ranking

Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union on January 1, 2007 but owing to shortcomings in justice reform and dealing with corruption the commission has kept an eye on developments through a special monitoring mechanism. Photo by EPA/BGNES

Irregularities in EU spending under pre-accession funds in Bulgaria and Romania has increased by 152% in 2008 over the previous year, according to a resolution adopted by MEPs on Thursday.

The resolution acknowledges the steps taken by Bulgaria and Romania to improve shared management and financial control standards.

Still it calls on the two newcomers, who joined the EU in 2007, to build up their administrative capacity to manage EU funding.

The document recommends the removal of existing or potential conflicts of interest in fund management, improvement in the supervision and transparency of public procurement procedures.

The two countries are also urged to swiftly introduce and notify to the Commission the necessary precautionary, corrective and/or disciplinary measures.

The resolution cites the pre-accession funds as an exception to an overall positive trend as irregularities in EU spending fell from EUR 1.024 M in 2007 to EUR 783.2 M in 2008.

Improvements are needed in the areas of VAT collection, the workings of the EU anti-fraud office OLAF and the process whereby governments report irregularities to the European Commission, the document says.

Although the estimated irregularities in fields like regional and agricultural expenditure were less in 2008 than in 2007, a large part of EU funds are still misspent.

MEPs have called on the Commission to take action to recover this money.

Regarding the EU's own budgetary resources, MEPs supported the Commission recast of the regulation on combating VAT fraud.

They stressed the need to make Member States more accountable in this area, starting with the quality of the information entered into the databases.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!