This paper locates the control of fraud against the Community budget within the wider context of the tensions engendered by fiscal crises and successive enlargements of the European Union. Funds allocated to the Member States for agriculture, whether in the form of subventions or structural grants, take up more than half of total budget expenditure, so the Common Agricultural Policy has been at the heart of the discussion on budgetary control. Since the 1980s the Common Agricultural Policy has been blamed for the repeated fiscal crises affecting the Community budget, and for frauds and irregularities. In this historical context, the control of fraud has not been static, but has gone through distinct phases, beginning with benign neglect in the 1960s and 70s, followed by transitional and active phases up to and including today's media focus on the Community budget, and the fraud affecting it. The paper analyses the prospects for future enforcement.