The Effectiveness Of Eu Financial Interests Protection – The Case Of Traditional Own Resources

The system of own revenues in the EU budget requires changes associated with greater emphasis on transparency and comprehensibility for citizens. It is also necessary to counteract smuggling, which leads to a reduction in customs revenues constituting 75% of the third largest source of revenue for the EU. Construction of a comprehensive information system and the exchange of information between customs services should still be a priority in the policy of the EU institutions, which entails additional spending to the EU budget. The need for new regulations concerning fight against fraud primarily is the effect of the insufficient coordination between Member States (in terms of the police, courts and prosecutor's office cooperation) and the EU services (OLAF, Europol, Eurojust). This is due to the absence or existence of inadequate legal instruments and procedures. The purpose of the article is to analyze fraud and financial irregularities relating to the traditional own resources as one of the EU budget revenue in the 2007-2014 period, to present the activities of the European Union and Member States services limiting the phenomenon of abuse and the European Commission's strategy on the protection of EU financial interests. Additionally, the paper includes the European Commission’s proposals to limit the phenomenon of abuse.