EU opens online lid on its budget spending (Reuters)
21 minutes ago
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European taxpayers got the chance on Thursday to scrutinize online how the European Union's executive administration spends another chunk of its vast budget and who gets how much cash in which of the EU's 27 countries.
The European Commission, which administers EU funds and policy on behalf of EU governments, launched a website (http://ec.europa.eu/grants/search/beneficiaries_en.htm) where anyone may search for beneficiaries by country, name or cash amount received from centralized or direct Commission funding.
That includes policy areas like energy, transport, research, education and culture, but also embraces financial records on grants and a range of EU contracts. The first available year is 2007; data on 2008 beneficiaries will be accessible in 2009.
"When it (website) is fully online, it will represent about 10 percent of the EU budget, or around 10 billion euros," Cristina Arigho, the Commission's spokeswoman for budgetary affairs, told a daily news briefing. The website launch comes just a couple of days after a September 30 deadline for EU countries to disclose information on the EU payments they hand out to farmers for rural development schemes, representing about a quarter of the EU's overall farm budget.
They have until the end of April 2009 to publish details of the recipients of all other farm payments under the Common Agricultural Policy, which eats up some 44 billion euros a year.
The EU has two main funding types: funds centrally managed by the Brussels-based Commission such as for research, and funds whose management is shared between the EU and its member states, such as the common agricultural and fisheries policies.
For the second type, the bulk of EU funding, the bloc entrusts management to member state governments.
(Reporting by Jeremy Smith; Editing by Toby Chopra)