Brussels - The European Union is to claw back over 200 million euros (293 million dollars) in aid misspent on EU farmers, with a third of the total sum coming from France, officials in Brussels said Tuesday. "The money returns to the (EU) budget because of non-compliance with EU rules or inadequate control procedures on agricultural expenditure," the EU's executive, the European Commission, said in a statement.
France, which regularly receives the largest EU handouts to its farmers, will have to pay back 71 million euros because its system for checking farmers' aid claims and fining those who made false declarations do not meet EU standards.
The sum represents less than 1 per cent of the 10 billion euros in farm support which France received from EU taxpayers in 2008.
Spain will have to hand back almost 32 million euros because its system of checks and fines on olive-oil producers did not live up to EU rules. Spain received the second-highest agricultural payment, 7.1 billion euros, in 2008.
And Hungary, which joined the EU in 2004, will have to pay back 12 million euros because of a failure to identify plots of farm land properly. That is a little under 2 per cent of the 700 million euros the country received in 2008.
In all, 18 of the EU's 27 member states have to pay back sums to the EU's budget because of slips in their farm support schemes.
