MEP CANDIDATES QUESTION CLAIMS BY EU’S CHIEF ACCOUNTANT

Two of the UKIP MEP candidates for the European elections in June 2009 were among a handful of accountants from business who attended a presentation of the EU accounts on Tuesday evening (11.11.08) at the Chartered Accountants Hall in the City of London. Andrew Smith and Michael McGough are both chartered accountants and they are number 3 and 6 on the Eastern Counties UKIP candidate list.

Despite continuing high error rates amounting to £5.02 billion of mis-spent funds in 2007, the EU’s Chief Accountant claims he received a clean report for last year. The presentation was made by Brian Gray, the British chartered accountant who replaced Marta Andreasen as Chief Accountant of the EU. Ms Andreasen was sacked by the EU after she refused to sign defective accounts, and she is standing as a UKIP MEP candidate in the South East. Mr McGough pointed out that Mr Gray’s claim was inconsistent with the auditor’s report and an investigation is under way.

Andrew Smith was particularly shocked when David Bostock of the European Court of Auditors stated that "Nobody seems to care if [there is] a high rate of error [in the EU accounts] for Structural Funds, except a few extreme Eurosceptics. Nobody suggests stopping these programmes due to a high rate of error". After the meeting Mr Smith said: “UKIP cares and would certainly stop such programmes as the auditor's casual approach to errors is totally unacceptable. In 2007 the EU had to recover wrongful payments of EUR 1.5 billion but the amount which was irrecoverable was not disclosed."

Michael McGough expressed amazement that Brian Gray's preferred solution when recipients of EU funds could not or would not comply with spending conditions was to make the conditions easier to meet. “It appears that an error rate of 2 per cent is accepted quite happily by the EU and up to 20 per cent in some overseas aid programmes. If such an error rate were made by Essex County Council, for example, there would be uproar.”