From the UK Telegraph:
The European Union is failing to keep track of huge annual subsidies, and 91 per cent of its budget is riddled with errors or cannot be verified, a financial watchdog said yesterday. The European Court of Auditors refused to certify EU accounts for the ninth successive year, saying Brussels has failed to match reform rhetoric with a genuine change of culture. Abuse is said to be endemic in the Common Agricultural Policy, which still consumes almost half the £65 billion budget….
…The court said it was almost impossible to track funds once they had been handed over to member states, which administer 80 per cent of the budget. Money also disappears into Russia, Central Asia, the Balkans and developing countries. Budget controls in Brussels itself are criticised. The report says the European Commission has still not switched to the sort of modern accounting system used by the British Government and World Bank, making it impossible to know if transactions have been “fully and correctly recorded”. [EU auditors blast budget failings, November 18, 2003, UK Telegraph]