(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The media places most emphasis on personal scandals and those who have to take personal responsibility. But it is misleading to place the main emphasis on personal failure and fraud within the EU's own body. Much indicates that the real problems lie in a completely different place.
Simply put: it is the EU institutions that adopt the budget and regulations, but it is the member states that manage most of the money – and are responsible for control.
Little profitable control
This can quickly lead to EU money being managed more generously than money subject to the National Audit Office, that it is not overly controlled and that it is viewed through the fingers of money spent on the edge of the regulations. Once again, if fraud is detected, the money will go out of the country and back to Brussels.
This means that countries that control more thoroughly than others get less out of EU funds. In countless ways, this is precisely what the Court of Auditors concludes: That it cannot be accounted for where money has taken the road and that undue payments are not detected and recovered.
Who should control who?
At this point, as in so many others, the EU's fundamental dilemma lies: at the same time, the EU is partly a collaboration between states that still perceive themselves as sovereign – and partly “An ever closer union” in the form of a supranational state.
Again and again, these two sides of the EU clash. On the question of fraud control: Should the states control the EU – or is it the EU that should control the states?
EU states must choose
In other words, when the money comes from Brussels, it becomes both logical and most effective if control is also subject to Brussels. But which EU countries envisage that the EU in area after area will build up its own administrative bodies to the displacement of national, perhaps even down to the municipal level? And that such administrative bodies – in order to avoid local kindness – should preferably be staffed as much as possible from other EU countries?
Nevertheless, all indications are that EU fraud will only increase – in line with the development of supranational funding schemes. EU states must sooner or later choose; either transfer the support schemes back to the nation state – or transfer control of the schemes over to the EU.
