The cohesion policy error rate rose last year from 5.7% to 6.6%, almost double the rate in the rest of the EU budget

Omissions

• The comparison figure is the overall EU budget error rate of 3.8% in 2025: 6.6% is roughly 1.7 times that level, so 'almost double' is a slight rhetorical rounding-up. Since cohesion itself is one of the largest spending areas, the error rate of the 'rest' of the budget excluding cohesion would be somewhat below 3.8%, which makes the near-doubling framing more defensible.
• The ECA stresses that the error rate is an estimate of spending that did not comply with applicable rules, not an estimate of fraud or of money lost; the speaker's framing omits this standard ECA caveat.
• The claim focuses on the one spending area with the highest error rate; the ECA report also shows increases in other areas (agriculture and environment) and an overall error rate that remains above the 2% materiality threshold.

Sources

• PrimaryEuropean Court of Auditors — '2025 – EU audit in brief' (Annual report on the 2025 financial year)'Cohesion, resilience and values' had an estimated level of error at 6.6 % (5.7 % in 2024). … Our estimate of the level of error in EU budget spending is at 3.8 % (2024: 3.6 %) which is above our materiality threshold.
• PrimaryEuropean Court of Auditors — press release 'Auditors: Homework to do on the EU's next long-term budget' (Annual report 2025)The error rate for cohesion funding rose from 5.7 % in 2024 to 6.6 % in 2025, while the rate for agriculture and the environment increased from ...
• SecondaryThe Brussels Times — 'The devil in the details: How the EU misspent 3.8% of the 2025 budget'The error rate for cohesion funding rose from 5.7 % in 2024 to 6.6 % in 2025, while the rate for agriculture and the environment increased from ... The estimated level of error in EU spending rose to 3.8 % in 2025, from 3.6 % in 2024.