Mr. Tony Murphy:

The Commission follows up on any error we find, which means it would be aware of any such scenario. If we raise an issue that is due to gold-plating behaviour in a member state, the Commission will follow it up. Indeed, the Commission often comes up against the same problem itself. It comes back to some member states having a fear about compliance and wanting to be 100% sure there will not be any comeback later on. It varies between member states, where mentality, culture and everything else has an impact. What happens in Ireland is totally different from what we see in some of the eastern and southern member states and even more so in Scandinavia. That is what we find and we try to deal with it. An advantage we have is we see all the different approaches and systems and can sometimes say that such-and-such is happening in a member state, it is a good practice and maybe others can learn from it, and vice versawhere there is bad practice. We have something of an advantage over national audit authorities like the Comptroller and Auditor General because we can compare different systems and approaches in different member states.