Call for greater audit powers

Commission wants new powers in wake of problems with Greece’s finances.

The European Commission is to make a renewed attempt to secure the audit powers it needs  to investigate government accounts, in the wake of the problems with Greece’s public finance statistics. 

The Commission will propose next month that its statistical department, Eurostat, should be allowed to carry out “in-depth monitoing visits” to member states to check that they are not hiding the true level of their public debt or current account deficit. This would include rights to demand information from national finance ministries.

The Commission was rebuffed by member states when it tried to secure these powers in 2005. But Joaquín Almunia, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said this week that recent events in Greece have reinforced the case. “We intend to present it [the proposal] again with new evidence that we need these capabilities,” he said, even if Eurostat would be able to use the new powers only when it had “very reasonable doubts”.

Scathing report

The Commission last week published a scathing report into the quality of Greek statistics, complaining of “deliberate misreporting” by successive governments.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the Eurogroup, said member states had made a “major mistake” when they rejected the Commission’s request in 2005.