European Union wastes billions of euros

The European Union (EU) wasted a lot of money last year. The annual report on EU spending said the Union misspent almost five billion euros (around US$6.4 billion). The boss of the European Court of Auditors, the group that made the report, said the EU was very careless and should look after its money better. He said his team "found too many cases of EU money not hitting the target". Vitor Caldeira, the Court's president, said that many Europeans have to be careful with their money because of the financial crisis. He said the EU should take greater care with its budget because of the weak economies in Europe: "These problems matter more than ever," he added. A spokesperson from the EU told reporters that the spending mistakes were under 4 per cent of the total EU budget. He added this was better than the 7 per cent error rate from five years ago. Some of the mistakes were very big. The EU spent money on the wrong things. One example was they gave money for training electronics employees to other kinds of workers. Another was giving money to forestry projects instead of farming programmes. Mr Caldeira said that only two areas of the EU budget had no mistakes. Marta Andreasen of the UK Independence Party said the mistakes showed the EU was seriously mismanaged. She also said this problem should "set alarm bells ringing".