The European Commission’s anti-fraud strategy covers the main elements needed to protect the EU budget, but the related action plans are often not ambitious enough, according to a new report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA). Reporting on the strategy’s effectiveness primarily concentrates on implementation status, rather than on results achieved or actual impact.
From 2021 to 2027, the Commission and the EU member states together manage an annual EU budget of up to €200 billion. Both the Commission and national authorities are responsible not only for making sure that this public money is spent properly, but also for combatting fraud and other illegal activities.
Due to the growing size of the EU budget, anti-fraud measures have become even more important, as fraud methods are evolving with emerging trends in crime. Artificial intelligence makes fraud schemes cheaper to develop, easier to scale and harder to detect, while cross-border economic activity within the EU increases the complexity of the fight against illegal practices. Given this context, the Commission needs a strong anti-fraud framework and reliable checks to prevent fraud, identify suspicious cases, and correct problems when they arise.
“An anti-fraud strategy on paper is not enough”, said Ildikó Gáll-Pelcz, the ECA Member in charge of the audit. “To protect EU money effectively, the European Commission must take a more ambitious approach and focus more on results.”
The auditors found that roles within the Commission’s anti-fraud framework are generally clearly defined. However, they noted that corporate oversight should receive more information to strengthen its role.
The auditors also found that while the Commission’s anti-fraud strategy follows the main principles of fraud-risk management, weaknesses remain in risk assessment. Relevant information sources – including external expertise – were not always used systematically, and the Commission’s various departments did not always update their anti-fraud strategies on time. This makes it harder for the Commission to maintain an up-to-date overview of fraud risks.
The Commission’s corporate and departmental action plans cover the full range of efforts to combat fraud, with a strong focus on prevention and detection. However, the link between objectives and actions is not always evident, many actions lack clear timelines or intermediate milestones, and the general level of ambition falls short. This makes follow-up more difficult, and raises doubts about whether the planned measures are sufficient to achieve the objectives.
The auditors also detected shortcomings in monitoring and reporting. The Commission uses indicators of varying quality, making progress and results hard to measure consistently. Overall, reporting focuses more on completed actions than on whether objectives were achieved or what impact the measures had.
Background information
Combatting fraud is essential for ensuring that EU money reaches its intended purpose and is not lost to wrongdoing. The Commission’s anti-fraud strategy is one of the main tools in the wider system designed to protect the EU budget.
The Commission’s 2017 internal control framework requires anti-fraud strategies both for the institution as a whole and for individual departments. Together, these strategies form an important part of the system used to safeguard the EU budget.
The Commission’s anti-fraud strategy, which was adopted in 2019 and followed by an updated action plan in 2023, sets out how the Commission intends to prevent, detect and respond to fraud affecting EU money. In other words, it is the Commission’s main policy framework for tackling fraud linked to both EU spending and EU revenue.
Source: eca.europa.eu
