Communication: Protection of the EU budget to end 2013

This Communication on the protection of the European Union (EU) budget seeks to describe in detail the functioning of the preventive and corrective mechanisms used to protect the EU budget from illegal or irregular expenditure, and to provide a best estimate of the figures resulting from their use.

Preventive actions and responsibilities depend on the method of implementation of the EU budget – for example interruptions and/or suspension of payments are widely used under Cohesion policy and have now been introduced to Agricultural spending.

Corrective actions, i.e. financial corrections and recoveries, arise following the supervision and checks made by both the Commission and, in the case of shared management expenditure, Member States on the eligibility of expenditure funded by the EU budget. Given the multi-annual character of the programmes, the control framework and the complexity of the corrective mechanisms and procedures, the results (i.e. corrections) are generally implemented several years after weaknesses or irregularities have been identified.

This Communication focuses primarily on the results of the Commission's supervisory role, but figures on financial corrections and recoveries resulting from Member State controls are also given.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)618: Follow the progress of this communication through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:618:FIN

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