The EU Court of Auditors has today published the results of their audit of the EU's 2005 accounts and has once again refused to certify the accounts as legal and reliable.

For the 12th year in a row, the Court has qualified the EU's accounts having found "weak internal controls for the majority of EU expenditure, both within Member States and at the Commission". The Court also reported a "high incidence of errors in the underlying transactions" and that "Overdeclarations and ineligible expenditure continue to go undetected within the majority of EU expenditure areas".

Contrary to EU spin, the problems were not limited to the areas where EU member countries have a role in managing funds. The report also found "deficiences in internal control" in expenditure on "internal policies" and "external action" which are both multi-billion pound funds directly managed by the EU Commission.

The Commission yesterday launched a pre-emptive attack against both the Court of Auditors and EU member countries in an attempt to deflect blame for this situation (see news). Yet the EU treaty, of which the Commission is supposed to be the 'guardian', says in Article 274 that the Commission is responsible for implementing the EU budget. Further, Article 53 of the Financial Regulation applicable to the EU budget confirms that the Commission has "final responsibility" where funds are subject to "shared management".

As the Court's president Hubert Weber also confirmed in his comments on this year's report, "it is the responsibility of the Commission to administer the budget in a way that reduces the risk of irregularities."

Reacting to the Court of Auditors' latest report, DM campaign director Marc Glendening said:

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