Almost €7bn of last year's EU budget paid out improperly Almost €7bn of last year's EU budget was paid out improperly, giving ammunition to British eurosceptics who have been enraged by a demand for more funds from Brussels. David Cameron, UK prime minister, has refused to pay a €2.1bn bill to the EU by a December 1 deadline, as he wrestles with the surging popularity of the eurosceptic UK Independence party and increasingly vocal anti-EU politicians within his own Conservative party. On Wednesday, the EU said the "error rate" in the €148.5bn budget for 2013 was 4.7 per cent, effectively unchanged from 4.8 per cent the year before. Britain's net contribution to the EU is more than £8bn annually. IN Brussels Vitor Caldeira, president of the European Court of Auditors, said the 28 member states, which are responsible for allocating 80 per cent of the funds, needed to take more care in their spending. "They need to pay more attention to getting the kind of results citizens expect to see from spending EU money," he said. Since 2007, the EU's auditors have signed off the bloc's accounts because they can trace where the money goes. However, they have noted that mistakes in allocation have remained persistently above a targeted 2 per cent threshold. Downing Street said on Wednesday: "This is further evidence of the importance of going further in reforms of the EU and EU budget accountability. It is one of the many reasons why the Prime Minister has sought to reduce the EU budget. The two areas most blighted by mis-spending were the funds for developing the poorer regions, with a 6.9 per cent error rate, and rural development, with 6.7 per cent. Mr Caldeira also noted that one of the biggest problems was a colossal backlog of about €322bn in funds that had been committed but not spent. When corruption is suspected, the auditors pass the cases to Olaf, the EU's anti-fraud office. However, the auditors noted that the error rate was not necessarily a sign of fraud or wastage. The most common problems are payments to ineligible projects or improper tendering. The auditors said typical cases involve roads or airports that attract insufficient traffic. In the farming sector, they gave the example of a Sardinian farmer who had been compensated for not using environmentally harmful chemicals on his artichokes when he had, in fact, used such products 12 times. In Slovenia, Bulgaria and Hungary, there were several cases of small businesses using research grants to carry out work for bigger parent companies that were themselves ineligible. In Spain, money was allocated for border reconnaissance helicopters but the aircraft were only used for this purpose 25 per cent of the time. Italy appears regularly in the error list, in part because it is such a large user of development funds in the poor south. In recent years, Italy has also had to return funds to the EU because of corruption in motorway construction. Still, Mr Caldeira noted that there was a gradual improvement in the overall EU error rate, which had stood at 6.9 per cent in 2007. He also added that, by international standards, the EU ran strict controls. In the US, the defence department is a key obstacle to completing a full audit of federal government. The Government Accountability Office says defence accounts for more than half of discretionary spending but "cannot accurately account for its spending or assets and is one of three major impediments that prevent GAO from rendering an opinion on the annual consolidated financial statements of the federal government."