A gift to ukip, an another headache for Cameroon
UK faces £34bn bill for black hole in EU budget
EU accused of financial mismanagement after auditors find huge black hole in the Brussels budget
Bruno Waterfield in Brussels and Peter Dominiczak
1:53PM GMT 26 Nov 2014
Auditors have identified a blackhole in European Union budgets that could lead to extra demands for cash from the British taxpayer of up to £34billion over the next six years.
David Cameron will be legally obliged to make up a share of a shortfall of £259billion by 2020 with liabilities for the Treasury estimated at £33.7bn, calculated at the usual rate of Britain’s EU contributions.
The hole in EU spending has been identified by the European Court of Auditors and represents a political disaster for the Prime Minister who has made repeated pledges to bring down the amount Britain pays into Brussels budgets.
“The EU’s ability to just grab money from taxpayers whenever it wants is an outrage. It underlines what is structurally wrong with our relationship under the existing treaties. The UK parliament should decide how much we want to pay the EU not bureaucrats in Brussels," said Bernard Jenkin MP, the chairman of the House of Commons public administration select committee.
In a special report earlier this week, EU auditors identified the sum in outstanding bills for legally binding spending commitments made by the European Commission over the last four years.
“Assuming that commitments will not be de-committed, and we don’t see how most of them could, it might be problematic to get this money from member states to finance the expenditure foreseen,” Igor Ludborzs, an EU auditor, told the Euractiv website.
“We don’t see a happy ending. The amounts are getting bigger and bigger.”
More:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11255493/UK-faces-34bn-bill-for-blackhole-in-EU-budget.html