Ms Marian Harkin, MEP:

As with Mr. Hayes, I am delighted to participate in this inaugural meeting using the video-conferencing facility. I will not comment on the fact that members of the joint committee can see us, whereas we cannot see them.

Mr. Hayes referred to some of the special reports the court does. It has done special reports on the globalisation fund and it is in the process of doing a report on the youth guarantee. These are very useful reports for Members of the European Parliament because they allow us to see how European money is spent, what is the added value and so forth. As a result, we have a good basis on which to tweak the relevant legislation, where necessary. I thank the European Court of Auditors for that.

I had to go through the European Court of Auditors annual report because I was writing opinions on it for my committee. The report states that member states had sufficient information available to them to prevent and correct errors before claiming reimbursement. If that information had been used, the estimated errors could have been reduced by approximately 2.4%. Furthermore, the error at member state level is of the order of 0.6%. If both of these matters had been dealt with, we could get below the 2% error level we speak about. I would like to hear Mr. Cardiff's views on that.

It is important to note the error level is, by and large, reducing every year. While there may be slight blips, the trend is definitely downwards. That is positive as it means that all involved, including member states and the Commission, are working to reduce errors.

Under competitiveness and growth, one of the reasons given for errors in the annual report is that beneficiaries sometimes misinterpret the complex eligibility rules or calculate costs incorrectly. I propose to ask about the misinterpretation of the complex eligibility rules because all Members of the European Parliament and Deputies regularly meet groups which access European funding and the first point they raise with us is the complexity of these rules. What is Mr. Cardiff's view on the Commission's proposals for lump sums? Would that idea help in this instance. I will leave it at that.

I thank the joint committee again. It is great to be part of this meeting. I am not sure if Cáit Hayes came up with the idea but it is great. When the joint committee's agenda includes a topic in which MEPs are interested or have some expertise, this approach gives us an opportunity to make an input to its deliberations.