European Union governments will have to return 244 million euros ($295 million) in misspent farm subsidies, with France, Greece, Italy and Britain singled out as the worst offenders, the EU executive said on Friday. France has to hand back more than 63 million euros that was incorrectly spent in the fruit and vegetable sectors.
Greece fell foul of the EU's strict rules for distributing livestock and arable subsidies to its farmers and was saddled with an invoice for both sectors of nearly 60 million euros.
Britain will have to pay back 49 million euros for failing to distribute 2002/03 farm subsidies by the usual deadline. Italy was hit with an invoice of 29 million euros for committing the same offence in 2001/02, the Commission said in a statement.