A new European Court of Auditors (ECA) report has highlighted that “The complexity of rural development policy and Member States’ weak control systems are the chief causes of the high error rate in spending.”
Published on 17 February 2015, the Special Report on Errors in Rural Development Spending argues that Member States’ control authorities “could and should have detected most of the errors affecting investment measures in rural development.”
The report highlights that the average error rate in rural development expenditure 2011-2013 was 8.2% and that most of the errors “are due to breaches of conditions set by Member States”.
“The key to bringing [the error rate] down is to strike the right balance between the number and complexity of rules governing spending […] and the efforts to guarantee compliance with such rules,” commented Rasa Budbergytė, the ECA Member responsible for the report.
For more information, visit the Court Of Auditors newsroom.
