Nadużycia finansowe w obszarze polityki spójności a ochrona interesów budżetowych Unii Europejskiej

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse the fraud occurring in the process of using the resources from the EU budget intended for cohesion policy. The article presents the organisational and legal conditions implemented in the Member States and the European Union aimed at limiting the irregularities in using the EU resources. Fraud has a detrimental impact on the revenues and expenditure of the EU general budget, it may result in using these resources for other unjustifiable purposes, and therefore reduce the effectiveness of the EU activities in the specified areas. This phenomenon relates particularly to using the resources as part of the projects co-financed by the EU funds. The importance of this problem increases especially at the time of growing public finance deficit in the EU budget. Further prospects of implementing the EU resources indicate that even the most well-developed control procedures will not eliminate the risk of fraud occurrence. Based on empirical data, the extent and reasons for existing irregularities in using the EU resources intended for cohesion policy in Poland have been identified.(original abstract)