Local MEP slams EU waste

After the European Union’s Court of Auditors failed to give the accounts a clean bill of health for the 22nd year in a row North West UKIP MEP Paul Nuttall has hit out at the huge amount of money being wasted.

Mr Nuttall said: “This shows that it’s just as well that we voted to leave the European Union when we did. The levels of waste and bureaucracy are breathtaking.

“Money is being wasted left, right and centre. When we're outside the EU we can cut out the middleman and look after our own businesses ourselves. It is outrageous that so much money is being thrown away and the sooner we get out the better.

"The system simply isn't fit for purpose,” he said.

The Court of Auditors’ report blasts the payments underlying the accounts as being 'materially affected by error', leading the Court to issue an adverse opinion on the legality and regularity of the payments underlying the accounts.

An adverse opinion is rare in accountancy, and is issued only in serious cases where there has been a substantial departure from generally accepted accounting principles.

In the 320-page report, the Court of Auditors blasted various examples of EU waste and mismanagement. But the Court of Auditor's findings only told a small part of the true scale of EU wastefulness, because only a small sample of all expenditure is scrutinised by the Court. There are undoubtedly many similar examples which will simply never be found.

The error rate is 3.8%, almost double the 2% threshold which is the maximum considered acceptable by the Court of Auditors, affecting a whopping €5.4 billion of EU spending.