FX.co ★ EU spends 7 billion euros by mistake

Everyone makes different mistakes; just a few can be safeguarded against them. The value of errors varies depending on their size. When summing up the results of another financial year, the specialists of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) found out that 7 billion euros from the European budget were misspent. Such an impressive figure, according to the report for 2013, makes up only 4.7% from the European budget, which is 148.5 billion euros. Mistakes were made mostly by the representatives of the energy, transportation and regional policies – 6.9% and of the agricultural development – 6.7%. However, wrong payments are not the result of some corruption schemes or work of professional conmen; they are real mistakes that can happen to anyone. For example, in Germany some funds were assigned for field boundaries dressing that, in the end, were not useful for the agriculture. The surveys were carried out, the work was in full swing, and the members of the commission came to the conclusion that these expenses are not connected to the inefficiency in spending. Let us hope that other officials will learn from this mistake and will be more careful. Europe, actually, has made little progress in this matter. For comparison, in 2012 misspending made up 4.8% with the allowable rate 2%. The European budget is formed mostly due to the payments of the EU's members that are proportional to the GDP value of these countries.