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ECA publishes opinion on how to improve the financial management of the EU budget

On 11 February 2009, the European Court of Auditors published an opinion entitled "Improving the financial management of the European Union budget: Risks and challenges". This opinion, adopted on 14 January, aims to bring together the main messages of recent annual and special reports of the Court in order to identify the main risks and challenges to reducing further the level of irregularity as well as improving the quality of EU spending.

One of the areas that the Court focuses on is EU research policy, in particular FP6 and FP7. The Court calls for radical simplification of the relevant legislative frameworks as well as more cost-effective supervisory and control systems, which could focus more on outputs than inputs. While considering that simplification is essential, the Court insisted on the fact that "care is needed to ensure that due attention is also paid to the likely effects on the quality of spending of introducing simplification primarily aimed at reducing the level of irregularity".

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