International

The European Commission wants to see new accountancy rules which will enable its annual accounts to gain approval more readily. Instead of the current margin of error of just 2%, plans are afoot to allow budgets to be accepted to a margin of error of 5%, a total of €7.5 billion per year. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong is not prepared to accept this and promises to so all that he can to prevent the EU from evading responsibility for such a huge sum.

In a recent memo the European Commission admitted that the currently acceptable 2% margin of error had never once been achieved and stated its view that this means that the figure should be increased. In the Commission's opinion stricter control and greater effort to reduce the number of errors would not pay dividends. "This is a totally topsy-turvy world," says De Jong. "Everyone should keep their own books in order, and that certainly includes the European Commission."

De Jong will be among the group of MEPs responsible for developing the European Parliament's reaction to the EU's new multi-annual budget, to be applied from 2013. In the Committee charged with this task, he will be concentrating his efforts on putting a stop to the practice of first transferring moneys from the member states to Brussels only to see them returned in a range of European funds. "Fewer funds, simpler rules and improved controls on spending are in the SP's view a better solution than accepting more errors," De Jong insists.