[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by jonbxx

First, a solid doffing of the cap for the research, thanks for bringing links, it's always appreciated!! [SEPH]: Cheers.

As I said, I am not a finance person, I'm a scientist so I guess I took this at face value. Is the methodology used different from that used elsewhere, i.e. commercial auditing or other governmental audits? I had a brief look and it seems sampling is used a lot but I am not familiar with what is good practice. [SEPH]: The bit I'm questioning mainly, is the sampling. In human studies, context is everything. If you needed to do a survey of, say, Christianity in major UK cities, you'd ensure that your sample represented that context. Then 1,000 random people in that context, would have statistical significance. When you are auditing EU expenditure, some areas are more prone to irregularity than others and for something as serious as this, you'd want to have proper weighting before making an across the board extrapolation. I'm saying that the statistical basis they've used is inadequate and in any case opaque to context.

On the trust issue, as a member of the EU, we have a mutually agreed remedy for disputes in the ECJ. We of course don't want any of that going forward so along with a trade deal, there is going to be a strong remedial/governance system going forward, especially if there is evidence or suspicion of wrongdoing by one party beforehand. [SEPH]: The EC is chasing money from other countries on the same customs basis. I see your point, that Brexit somewhat hinders the recoverability of any due sum. I wish they were as diligent in pursuing Germany for consistently breaking the 3% surplus rule.