Malta's member of the European Court of Auditors (ECA), Josef Bonnici, together with the institution's President, Hubert Weber, yesterday presented the ECA's Annual Report 2006 to the European Parliament in Brussels.

The presentation marks an important milestone in what is referred to as the discharge process.

In this case, the European Parliament assesses and discusses the implementation of the EU budget drawn up by the European Commission.

In its report, the ECA once again identified persisting deficiencies concerning the "legality and regularity" (compliance) aspect of the EU's accounts.

It has, however, acknowledged important improvements, particularly in agricultural expenditure, which is the largest expenditure item in the EU budget. On the other hand, the report underscores a high level of error in structural funds expenditure. Prof. Bonnici is tasked with providing a common framework for the audits of the EU.

He is also responsible for coordinating the process that allows the resulting "specific assessments" to be amalgamated into one overall audit opinion covering the whole EU budget.

"The report is more informative and consequently more useful. In particular, for the first time, the report includes details of the "estimated error rates expressed as a range of values.

"These figures result from the audit by the ECA of a number of projects receiving EU funds, based on statistical sampling procedures," Prof. Bonnici said.

These developments have made it easier to identify where improvements have taken place, as well as highlighting more clearly where problems persist.