By Martin Banks - 8th November 2012
Commission president José Manuel Barroso has been urged to create a new portfolio to tackle continuing irregularities in the EU accounts.
The demand was made by senior MEP Martin Callanan who says a budgetary control commissioner is needed to "get to grips" with an "unacceptable" situation with the EU accounts.
Callanan has written to Barroso calling on him to allocate a portfolio of budgetary control to the incoming commissioner post that will be created when Croatia joins the EU.
The call for a new commissioner for budgetary control in the next executive was also tabled by the ECR to parliament's own report on 'discharge' of the EU's 2010 accounts and supported by the parliamentary vote.
The demand comes in the wake of revelations earlier this week that for the eighteenth time in a row, the EU's auditors have not been able to give a clean bill of health to the EU's accounts.
The European Court of Auditors published its report into the EU's accounts for 2011 on Monday.
They highlight that payments were affected by material error, with an estimated error rate of 3.9 per cent for the EU budget as a whole - a slight increase on last year and a year-on-year increase over the past several years.
Callanan said, "The EU needs to start taking this annual charade seriously. We can no longer have a commissioner responsible for budgetary control part-time.
"Instead, the commission will shortly need to create a new portfolio for Croatia's commissioner and I can think of no priority more deserving than this.
"Much of the blame for these spending errors lies with national governments. However, the commission is ultimately responsible for all EU monies spent and it falls to them to take responsibility for this report.
"This annual debacle will continue until the commission decides to apply maximum effort to ending it. The EU budget needs reform and the best place to start would be the introduction of a commissioner dedicated to achieving it."
