The 2006 Annual Report of the Commission on the protection of the financial interests of the EU and the crackdown on fraud describes the main provisions for the prevention and countering of fraud taken by the member states and by the competent services at the EU level. It also furnishes a list of the thousands of irregularities reported and prosecuted. The Report underlines the sharp rise in fraud in the sectors of agriculture, cohesion and pre-membership funds, but this is offset in part by a reduction in the areas of “own resources” and “structural funds” (policy of regional development and social policy). In particular, in 2006 over 12,000 cases of irregularity were reported: 5243 for own resources (the estimated percentage of fraud is 22% for a total of 134 million euros); 3249 for agriculture (10%, 30 million euros); 3216 for Structural and Cohesion Funds (16.6%, 157 million euros); and 384 for pre-membership measures (15%, 1.5 million euros). The 2006 Report describes in detail the procedures for the recovery of misappropriated funds and the “financial corrections put in place”.
