Half the money the European Union spends on aid is wasted, stolen or held up by incompetence, a report has warned. The study by MEPs responsible for auditing EU spending found that GBP 11.5 billion (approx. EUR 15 billion) of the GBP 23 billion (approx. EUR 30 billion) doled out by Brussels each year fails to achieve its stated aims. Ingeborg Graessle, chairman of the European Parliament’s committee on budget control, said the EU was ‘effectively throwing money down the toilet’ and called for a wide-ranging review of the way Brussels spends aid money, since more than 900 aid projects worth GBP 11.5 billion are either significantly delayed or will fail to achieve their objectives. The EU is the biggest development aid donor in the world, but has faced criticism over its failure to properly measure the outcomes of the vast expenditure. Read more here.
Source: Daily Mail UK
