BUDGET: COMMISSION APPROVES REPORT ON INSPECTION ACTIVITIES ON OWN RESOURCES.

The Member States are responsible for the transfer to the EU Budget of own resources, by means of accounting, recovery and making available the amounts due. Regulation 1355/96/EC (which amends Regulation 1552/89) provides that they must send the Commission their annual report on audits carried out on the collection of resources. The aim of the comparative analysis of these reports carried out by the Commission is to have a global view, on the one hand, of the quality of auditing activities in the various Member States, and, on the other hand, the volume at EU level of fraud and irregularity in the area of traditional own resources. In this case the evolution of the figures is calculated for the period 1996, the year of the first annual report, to 1997.Inspections by Member States.The Commission points out that a general picture of inspection operations can be provided by comparing the entries accepted, the entries checked after customs clearance and staff specialising in inspections of this kind in each Member State. Comparison of 1996 and 1997 figures reveals a wide discrepancy between the number of entries accepted by the Netherlands and Germany, and those accepted by the United Kingdom, especially when compared with each Member State's share of established traditional own resources. It should be pointed out that, apart from in Germany, Spain, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the number of entries checked after customs clearance did not move in line with the entries accepted in many Member States. In France and Italy in particular, the number of entries checked after customs clearance dropped by 76% and 93% respectively in relation to 1996. As for the relationship between staff specialising in post-clearance checks and the number of entries inspected, it is difficult to make comparisons because of differences in the internal organisation of national government departments.Fraud and irregularities.The annual reports contain two types of statistics on cases of fraud and irregularities, the volume of cases detected and accounting data. A table, therefore, sets out three series of figures; the number of cases detected, the amounts established and the amounts recovered. This gives a figure of the pattern of fraud on the EU's customs territory, and the efforts deployed in combating fraud. Comparison of the data between Member States reveals major discrepancies that are difficult to interpret, given that the number of cases of fraud and...