When the EU’s Court of Auditors were unable to sign off the EU accounts fully this year, I knew that some politicians back in the UK would try to make political capital out of it. So I made sure I read the report very carefully to find out what it actually says.

The auditors found that the EU’s accounts were “legal and regular as far as the revenue, commitments and administrative expenditure are concerned”. In other words, everything the Commission manages centrally is in order. The auditors also point out that reforms introduced by Neil Kinnock are working.

Where, then, does the problem lie? The auditors say: “owing to persistent weaknesses at member state level in systems for supervising and controlling the implementation of the EU budget, payments were still affected by the same types of error occurring with the same frequency as in previous years”. In other words, it’s national governments, not the EU centrally, that are causing the problems!

One last, very important point. The Court does not mention a single case of fraud anywhere in its report! The “errors” reported are either procedural or to do with accounting systems.