Protection of the European Union’s Public (Financial) Interest in Normative Budgetary Principles

Abstract

The problems concerning the protection of the EU financial interest are generally discussed in the context of fighting corruption or preventing and eliminating fraud (financial irregularities). In many cases, the actions taken have ex-post character since they concern situations of inappropriate distribution (allocation) of public funds. In this article, the Author approached these problematics a bit differently because he tried to prove that already on the stage of planning (constructing) EU budget as well as during its implementation there are instruments such as normative budgetary principles which may serve to protect its financial interest ex-ante. Moreover, the primary sources of this protection should be also found in the public choice theory, functioning in the economics. Therefore, the aim of this article is to prove the following hypotheses: the basis for protection of the EU financial interest is to be found in the functioning public choice theory as well as in – being its consequence – normative budgetary principles, whose content includes duty to properly govern, and especially plan, public funds accumulated in the EU budget. Conclusions resulting from the analysis of the indicated problematics have been determined on the basis of non-reactive (non-empirical) research methods, i.e. examination of the reference literature and binding EU regulations.