THE European Commission will today launch a pre-emptive strike against the EU auditor, accusing it, on the eve of publishing its opinion on the EU’s 2005 accounts, of being “unfair”.

The European Court of Auditors’ review is expected again to qualify its opinion in relation to large areas of EU spending, but the European Commission will criticise the auditor’s procedures and methodology.

The Commission will also call on member state governments to take more responsibility for their role in handling the majority of EU financial transactions.

Anger is mounting in Brussels over the ECA’s annual reports, which every year provoke widespread criticism of the Commission’s handling of its finances that are widely believed to be vitiated by error and fraud.

Tomorrow’s opinion from the Court of Auditors is expected to be the twelfth year in which it expresses reservations about the accuracy of underlying transactions. Areas of spending from which the auditor is likely to withhold its blessing include parts of the agricultural budget, structural funds and research spending.

In a highly unusual intervention, the Commission will confront the Court of Auditors today and call for changes in auditing methods.

Siim Kallas, the Commission’s vice-president for administration, audit and anti-fraud, believes that the perception of widespread fraud is based on a myth and that the Commission is being held to account for a failure by national governments to audit properly their own handling of EU funds.

According to Mr Kallas, the Court of Auditors bases its opinion on “small samples of transactions”. And, he says, the auditor refuses to take account of the recovery of funds by the Commission at the end of a project. Clawback mechanisms allowed the Commission to recover €2.17 billion (£1.45 billion) in 2005 from multiyear programmes, but the auditor says this does not reduce the error rate.

“If you lose your wallet and you get it back with the money inside, the problem is over,” Mr Kallas said. “This (perception of widespread error and fraud is highly unfair. The spending of money in the EU is under tight control.”

The Commission has begun to point the finger at national governments. According to Mr Kallas, the auditor is required to report on the accuracy of 1.5 million financial transactions by the Commission itself but these represent less than a fifth of the total because 78 per cent of EU funds are doled out by member states in agricultural payments and subsidies and aid for depressed regions.

In the UK, there are doubts whether government funds are properly controlled. According to Sir John Bourn, the UK’s Comptroller and Auditor-General, there are 500 accounts representing expenditure by the Government. He said: “In the last year I qualified 13 of the 500. If I had to operate the EU system, then because I qualify 13 accounts, I might have to qualify the whole of government expenditure.”

Richard Ashworth, Conservative budget spokesman in the European Parliament, supported the call for more accountability in Britain for EU funds. “National governments seem happy to keep passing the buck for deficiencies at home,” he said. “If Gordon Brown were to have shown some leadership last year . . . we may have come close to a clean bill of health this year.”

The Commission and the EU’s Council of Ministers, which represents member states, recently agreed that national governments would provide a “declaration of assurance” for payments made by member states.

Throughout the EU there are 1,100 paying agencies responsible for checking payments to farmers and other recipients of EU funds.

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