A new report from the European Union’s financial watchdog on Thursday shows that debt is growing and the number of mistakes made when spending money is going up. It told policymakers who are negotiating the budget for 2028–2034 to avoid the problems with the pandemic-era stimulus plan, which is a lot like what the planned budget would do. The European Commission, on the other hand, said that strong checks keep its money safe.
The European Court of Auditors (ECA), which is the EU’s independent outside auditor, said that EU or national funding rules were broken in 3.8% of last year’s EU budget spending, excluding the recovery fund. This is up from 3.6% in 2024 and well above the 2% threshold for material mistake.
The number doesn’t measure fraud, but auditors told EU authorities about 17 cases they thought might be fraud.When it came to cohesion support for jobs, growth, and regional development, the error rate went from 5.7% to 6.6%, and when it came to agriculture and the environment, it went from 2.6% to 3.9%.
The European Commission, which is in charge of the EU budget, said that cohesion would be 2.3%, but the auditors said that this was “likely to be underestimated.” The Commission said on Thursday that the error rate was “comparable” to last year’s and “significantly lower” than the rates recorded by inspectors in 2023 and 2022, which were 5.6% and 4.2% the following years.
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