MEPs demand better accounting

By Martin Banks

Date: 29/09/05

MEPs will next week be demanding improvements to the EU's accounting and auditing practices as they host a discussion of the Commission's continuing difficulties.

The seminar, entitled "The EU's financial management: fact, fiction and future", comes just a few weeks before the European Court of Auditors is to issue its annual report on the 2004 financial year. In each year since 1994, the court has qualified its statement of assurance on the reliability of the accounts and on the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions.

Jules Muis, the former internal auditor of the Commission, has been invited to return from the US to give his views to the Parliament's budgetary control committee. He will be emphasising the importance of making the directors-general accountable for financial control.

But Ian Ball, chief executive of the International Federation of Accountants, will be arguing that the Court of Auditors must improve its act. "The directors-general are not auditors. The court cannot, and should not, rely on [their] reports and declarations without itself performing appropriate audit work," Ball says in a paper for the seminar on Tuesday (6 October).

Article anticipates a seminar, to be hosted by the European Parliament's Budgetary Control Committee on 6 October 2005. The seminar, entitled 'The EU's financial management: fact, fiction and future' was planning to discuss how to improve the EU's accounting and auditing practices in the light of the European Commission's continuing difficulties.