UK penalised for mistakes in EU fund spending

The government of the United Kingdom has been fined GBP 650 million since the previous decade due to mistakes in the spending approach by the public organisations. The public accounts committee curses the country's Treasury for its inability to govern the way the European Union funds has been used up.

The report by the European Commission has discovered that public organisations seem to have recognized the issue only recently. The commission urges the treasury to report immediately the causes and levels of fines. According to the chairman of the committee Meg Hillier, UK's sluggishness towards handling EU fines burdened taxpayers across the nation. She continued that fund allocated for public projects and programmes have been lost in fines, annoying people, regardless of their views on Brexit, as reported by theguardian.

She also insisted that the treasury and public bodies should explore the reasons for EU fines and act accordingly in order to correct their errors. The report noted that the union budget obtained EUR 143.9 billion in 2014 as donations from 28 states as well as other sources, and paid EUR 142.5 billion in payments. The gross contribution from the UK towards the budget, including the repayment of GBP 4.9 billion, amounted to GBP 11.4 billion. The EU budget gave GBP 5.6 billion in public and private department incomes to the UK government, making the net contribution from the UK to GBP 5.7 billion.

The total contribution, excluding the incomes from the private department, in 2014 - 2015 corresponded to 1.4% of the public departmental spending in the country. Sectors like Food and Rural Affairs, Department of Environment, and the Rural Payments Agency were left out in the report for misusing the union fund.

Belfast Telegraph quoted a spokesman from the treasury, who said, "Our local communities, farmers and world-leading universities are better off as a result of EU funding, and we're committed to ensuring this money is spent in the most effective way possible." The public departments had serious hurdles caused by strict EU rules, according to the committee.

According to Brexit supporters, UK's membership exit from the union is the only way to escape from this situation. BBC quoted Matthew Elliott, chief executive officer of Vote Leave, who said that the union money was burdened with strict rules. He added that the union penalises them frequently for not complying with Brussels' order.

The committee stated that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) accounted for much of the fines, which means the correspondent of GBP 2.70 in each GBP 100 of CAP financing was returned in penalties. The sector for Communities and Local Government lost GBP 8.1 million as a result of unqualified payments and earning from the European Regional Development Fund.

Tags

UK government, Brexit, European Union, European Commission, public department spending

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