Statement on the Court of Auditors' Annual Report
10 November 2009
I am delighted that, for the first time, Agriculture and Natural Resources has received a green light from the Court of Auditors. The error rate for this policy group as a whole is now below 2%. This marks a milestone in the Commission's efforts to achieve a positive declaration of assurance from the Court.
This success is mainly thanks to recent reforms of the CAP, which have greatly simplified things for farmers and administrations. I am also pleased to report that the error rate is decreasing for Rural Development policy. Of course, we will strive to continue this improvement in the years to come.
Our efforts have brought results. Decoupling of aid payments is a major simplification. The success of the integrated administration and control system, IACS, has been acknowledged by the Court as well as the European Parliament.
I am of course aware of the remaining difficulties, in particular in the area of Rural Development. There are more errors in this area because the commitments farmers have to respect are very detailed. However, these commitments are necessary to ensure that the measures achieve the objectives for which they are designed, particularly for agri-environmental measures.
We should also be very proud of achieving these major improvements in agricultural spending at the time of the biggest enlargement in the EU's history. The new Member States have made great efforts to successfully introduce the agricultural controls in a very short space of time.
We must of course continue to take a firm stance on checks and corrections to lock in the progress we have made.
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As people who climb a mountain or run a marathon would know, one of the best feelings in life is the satisfaction of achieving a goal after working long and hard to get there. Today, I reach a goal which I set out when taking office in 2004: to get the Court of Auditors' seal of approval on how we spend the agricultural part of the EU budget.