Chris Heaton-Harris is currently an MEP for the East Midlands, and will be standing down at June's European election to concentrate on his role as prospective parliamentary candidate for Daventry, where Tim Boswell is standing down. He is a member of the European Parliament's Budgetary Control Committee. Last year he wrote a rough guide to the contents of the EU budget.
There is one thing that everybody seems to know about Europe. And it is quite shocking that considering everyone's knowledge of the problem, that no one seems to care about a solution; or indeed care at all.
I am talking about the perennial story of the European Commission's accounts not being signed off – this time for the 14th consecutive year.
What most people probably don't know - and what never gets reported - is that after the Court of Auditors gives it's opinion (normally there are a few headlines - see here and here for some recent examples) a long process starts, which lasts 9 months and gives MEPs the power to look into every Eurocent that the Commission has spent in the previous year.
The plain fact is this: the Court of Auditors has no power over the EU Budget. I'll say that again: the headlines you have read every year about accounts "not being signed off" refer to an institution with no real power. The European Parliament, by contrast, has genuine power here. If the Parliament refuses to grant discharge ("discharge" means a positive approval of the accounts) then whilst the Commission is not compelled to resign, a considerable amount of pressure would be imposed on it to sort out the problems within its accounts and accounting systems once and for all.…
This article's purpose is to take you through the jargon and the boredom of the “Budget Discharge” process. I want to explain which questions I ask, and why, and explain why I think this process deserves a lot more attention from the press and MEPs than it currently gets.
I am ardently hoping that one of the MEPs who will replace me at the forthcoming European elections might look at this and be better prepared than I was when started researching this subject nearly ten years ago.
So, let us start at the very beginning...
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