Brussels has been dragged into a bogus accounting scandal after it was claimed climate change spending had been overblown by at least €24 billion.
The European Court of Auditors has questioned the European Commission’s claims about its climate-change programmes. It was found the European Union’s powerful executive had substantially overestimated the amount it spent on preventing global warming though the use of clever-accounting. Farmers have been handed cash subsidies which have been counted as agriculture-based spending aimed at climate protection by the Commission.
Eurocrats pass off their subsistence payments to farmers as climate spending, as long as the farmers fulfil a certain level of climate standards.
The ECA said in its report the Commission had overstated the current 2014-2020 budget’s contribution to tackling climate change.
They warned the same was likely to be true for the next seven-year cycle.
The auditors said:
Our analysis of Member State rural development programmes in the same report showed that the Commission was overestimating their contribution to climate action by more than 40 percent, or almost €24billion.
This is because the Commission did not adequately distinguish between climate contributions made by different activities.
The Commission justified this approach by the need to strike a balance between minimising the administrative burden and costs and providing a reasonably reliable estimate for climate-related spending within the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development.”
ECA auditor Joelle Elvinger called on the Commission to develop more robust methods for tracking its spending.
She said:
The anticipated contributions to climate-related spending, in particular from some agricultural schemes, are likely to be overstated.
“Without a robust methodology, the estimated climate spending may not be reliable.”
Agriculture spending is expected to make up nearly half of the climate spending from the bloc’s 2021-2027 budget, which has been muted at a total of €1.075trillion.