Not our problem - EU fraud

If the European Anti-Fraud Commissioner Algirdas Šemeta is right to claim, as he did in evidence to the House of Lords European Union Committee [1], that EU funds aren’t any “more prone to fraud than national budgets”, then, based on the UK National Fraud Authority’s estimate of losses in the UK public sector of 3.4%, total fraud against EU finances should amount to €4.82bn, more than 10 times the Commission’s own estimate of €404m (all 2011 numbers).