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Preventive and corrective mechanisms to protect taxpayers’ money
The Commission gives the highest priority to ensuring that the EU budget is well-managed and that all the
necessary measures are in place to protect taxpayers’ money. This Communication describes the preventive and
corrective actions taken by the Commission and Member States to protect the EU budget from illegal or irregular
expenditure.
Financial corrections and recoveries
There are different types of safeguards in place to
prevent, detect and rectify incorrect expenditure:
• Preventive measures: controls before payments,
interruptions and suspensions of payments. The
Commission focuses more and more on measures
which prevent irregular expenditure and help avoid such
irregularities recurring in the future.
• Corrective measures: used when preventive measures
have not been effective. These concern primarily financial
corrections imposed on with Member States and, to a
lesser extent, recoveries from recipients of EU payments.
In 2015, the total financial corrections and recoveries
implemented amounted to almost EUR 3.9 billion, which is
equivalent to 2.7% of payments made.
3.9
billion
EUR
in financial corrections and
recoveries implemented in 2015
The primary objective of financial corrections and recoveries
is to ensure that only expenditure in accordance
with the legal framework is financed by the EU
budget. They arise following the supervision and checks
made by both the Commission and also, in the case of
shared management, Member States on the eligibility of
expenditure funded by the EU budget. Most corrections are
done after payments are made, although many are also
done before.
Financial corrections and recoveries leading to
reimbursement to the EU budget are characteristic for
agriculture and rural development as well as direct and
indirect management. For Cohesion Policy however, such
‘net’ corrections were the exception, until the 20142020 programming period. It was due to the different
legal framework and budget management types, which
allowed Member States to replace the projects of ineligible
expenditure with alternatives.
Humanitarian aid
Cohesion
Skills
INTEGRATED FINANCIAL REPORTING PACKAGE 2015
Amounts at risk at closure
The 2015 financial year is the first for which the European
Commission presents an outlook of the amounts at risk
at closure, i.e. a consolidated estimation of errors
remaining after all corrective measures have been
implemented at the end of the programmes.
This approach reflects the fact that the control cycle is
multiannual and stretches to more than 1 year of funding
and implementation of projects. The amount at risk at
closure in 2015 was between 0.8% and 1.3% for the
different policy areas:
Expenditure in 2015, along with estimated amount at risk for 2015 payments and estimated future corrections
for 2015 payment (EUR million)
Outlook at closure regarding 2015 expenditure
Area
Lowest value
Agriculture
57 677
Cohesion
54 284
External relations
Research
Estimated future corrections
Total relevant Estimated amount at riSk at
payment in relation to 2015
expenditure
expenditure
in 2015
9 713
12 482
Highest value
1 167
1 545
Highest value
1 066
2 702
281
259
Lowest value
874
Estimated amount at risk at
closure taking into account
future corrections
Lowest value
Highest value
101
1 435
62
672
1 267
219
290
127
132
163
Other internal policies
3 488
32
38
11
21
27
Administration
5 683
19
22
1
18
21
143 328
3 303
4 500
1 162
1 798
Total
Errors do not always reflect fraud, inefficiency or waste.
They are an estimate of money which should not
have been paid out because it was not fully used in
accordance with EU rules.
The Communication on the Protection of EU Budget
illustrates the successful efforts made by the European
Commission to prevent, detect and correct errors. In
europa.eu/!Dh43qk
2 141
2 702
a fully transparent manner it presents all the information
available on amounts which were identified as being wrongly
used and which were therefore corrected, including by
reimbursement to the EU budget. This shows that effective
control systems are already in place to make sure that
taxpayers’ money is spent correctly and according to the
rules. The Commission is confident that the level of error
can continue on a downward trend with the cooperation of
Member States further building on lessons learned.
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