The European Union executive called on the bloc's governments to account better for the way they spend EU funds, making a veiled threat to withhold payments from its massive regional aid budget. EU governments currently provide the European Commission with only limited accounting evidence of how they spend regional aid funds, which make up one-third of the 27-nation bloc's €120 billion ($174.4 billion) annual budget.

This lack of transparency and proper audits has led the EU's budget watchdog, the European Court of Auditors, to refuse a clean bill of health to the bloc's budget for 13 years in a row, giving powerful arguments to opponents of EU integration.

Pressed by the Commission, EU governments agreed last year to provide clearer evidence of how the funds are spent. But Commissioner for Administrative Affairs Siim Kallas told the bloc's finance ministers on Tuesday he had not been satisfied.

"We have made it absolutely clear what we expect to receive by the 15th February, on Friday. We expect to receive the annual summaries of audits and declarations covering all structural action payments from the EU budget," he told the ministers.

Unless the figures are submitted, Kallas said, the Commission may find it difficult to refund to member states money paid out for EU-financed projects, such as motorways, environmental clean-ups and industrial overhauls.

"States which decline to make the best possible efforts to meet this obligation carry a significant responsibility for the future of the discharge procedure, and with it the perceived credibility of the management of EU funding," he said.

The warning came as the bloc's finance ministers were debating a discharge of the 2006 budget. The ministers approved the discharge by a qualified majority, with Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos voting against in a gesture to press his colleagues to be more transparent.