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More ‘social justice’ from Brussels.
[From UK Times]
WITH business-class air fares paid and an all-day limousine service on tap, Euro MPs had only to pay for the taxi home after dining out in Brussels’ vaunted restaurants. Now they have eliminated even that small cost.
Blithely ignoring charges of “moral corruption”, MEPs have voted to give themselves an allowance of up to €50 (£34) a week to cover the cost of getting back to their Brussels pads after the free limousine service ends at 10pm.
It’s the concern for the poor and needy that makes European politics so progressive.
I believe this is not the last story of this sort we will see coming out of Brussels:
[Robert McCoy] has worked for the European Union for more than 30 years. His friends regard him as an upright and loyal bureaucrat, keen to uphold the EU’s name against its critics, whether in Brussels or back home in Britain.
Yet Robert McCoy must steel himself before he walks the corridors of his own EU institution. If he is lucky, senior colleagues at the glass and concrete headquarters of the Committee of the Regions – a Brussels talking-shop for local government representatives, set up under the Maastricht Treaty – merely ignore him, turning their heads ostentatiously as he passes.
If not, he may be on the receiving end of abuse. “Gestapo! Gestapo!” angry fellow workers once taunted him. One manager spat on the floor as he walked by, friends say.
As the Telegraph reports Mr McCoy’s offence – as it was apparently regarded by some EU staff and politicians – was to stumble upon, investigate and then seek to correct a series of financial irregularities within the Committee of the Regions (CoR), whose annual budget is €38 million (£27 million).
Last week, Romano Prodi and Neil Kinnock insisted that since EU commissioners were ignorant of Eurostat’s problems until this year, they could not be held responsible for what happened earlier. The frauds, and the culture that permitted them, were a one-off and had long since ended, Mr Prodi assured MEPs during a tense closed-door meeting in Strasbourg on Thursday.
In a devastating letter to a senior MEP, seen by The Telegraph, Mr McCoy details his three-year campaign to stamp out suspected fraud within the CoR, and his vain attempts to persuade senior managers to summon outside expertise to investigate the problems.
His inside account, and documents obtained by members of the European Parliament’s budgetary control committee, reveals an approach by some EU officials which helps explain how at least ?3 million (£2 million) could disappear from the coffers of an organisation like Eurostat without anyone noticing – or complaining.
I felt that I had repeatedly hit a brick wall in my efforts to do my job. I have nowhere else to turn, having exhausted all administrative and political avenues available to me within the CoR.
After Mr McCoy sought the official attendance sheets to make a spot check on the signatures, the Secretary General angrily rebuked him. “Robert, I am very displeased with this affair,” Mr Falcone wrote in an e-mail which has circulated among MEPs. “The Financial Controller is not the police.” One can only speculate why the officials in charge reacted with hostility rather than reward his for a job well done. McCoy comments:
We now know that there have been huge problems at Eurostat over many years, caused by the same kind of culture that I have encountered at the CoR. Who knows how many other EU institutions are similarly affected?
A rather late and rude awakening for Mr McCoy. The rot goes to the heart of the institution, there can be no perestroika.
ATTN: THE SAMIZDATA TEAM
FROM: THE HONOURABLE PRESIDENT
OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION, ROMANO PRODI
Dear Sir/Madam,
Good day Sirs. I hope my letter does not cause you too much embarrassment as I write to you in good faith and the transaction is of mutual benefit. Based on the contact address given to me by a friend who works at the Nigerian chamber of commerce attached to your embassy in my country.
Please excuse my intrusion into your private life. I am Romano Prodi, the appointed President of the European Commission and my friends and I are in danger of losing a lot of money due to vindictive investigators and their friends in the media who are bent on ruining us financially. Consequently, my friends in the Commission have asked me to seek for a foreign partner who can work with us to move out the total sum of €75,000,000.00 ( seventy five million Euros), presently in their possession.
This money was of course, acquired by my friends through hard work and enterprise. The Swiss government has already frozen all our accounts in Switzerland, and some other countries would soon follow to do the same.
This bid by some political rivals to deal with this my friends and I has made it necessary that we seek your assistance in receiving this money and in investing it on behalf of our behalf. This must be a joint venture transaction and we must all work together. Since this money is still in cash, extra security measures have been taken to protect it from theft or seizure, pending when agreement is reached on when to move it into a secure and anonymous territory pending on our agreement.
I have personally worked out all modalities for the peaceful conclusion of this transaction. The transaction definitely would be handled in phases and the first phase will involve the moving of €25,000,000.00 (twenty five million Euros).
My friends are willing to give you a reasonable percentage of this money as soon as the transaction is concluded. It will, however, be based on the grounds that you are willing to work with us and also all contentious issues being discussed before the commencement of this transaction. You may also discuss your percentage before we start to work. As soon as I hear from you, I will give you all necessary details as to how we intend to carry out the whole transaction. Please, do not entertain any fears, as all necessary modalities are in place, and I assure you of all success and safety in this transaction.
Please, this transaction requires absolute confidentiality and you would be expected to treat it as such until the funds are moved out of Europe to where you intend to receive them.
In compliance with this you are to forward to me the following details: your complete names and addresses, confidential telephone and fax numbers, bank account details and all relevant account numbers. This is to enable me perfect all the necessary documentation with the security firm and move this money across to your country of choice.
Please, you will also ignore this letter and respect our trust in you by not exposing this transaction, even if you are not interested.
I look forwards to working with you. Thank you.
Truly Yours
Romano Prodi.
Please, prepare yourselves for a shock. Sit down on a comfortable chair and secure that goldfish. For I’m about to rock your world. Yes, friends, some EU corruption has been discovered within the gilded halls of Strasbourg.
I know, it beggers belief, but there it is. Millions of €uros have apparently been diverted into slush funds to pay for holidays, freebies, and extravagant dinners. So, who are the thieves? This money was allegedly stolen by the EU’s own number crunchers. Whisper it quietly to your friends, but apparently they left no audit trail, too! Quelle horreur! And some of the money stolen was used to form a volleyball team! Crikey.
I was sitting on the train, this morning, minding my own business, and this story hove into view. It was such a non-event, such a non-story, that at first it completely passed me by. For I was under the mistaken impression that the entire EU budget already was a giant slush fund, for useless bureaucrats such as Neil Kinnock to dip their greedy snouts into. But I was wrong. Apparently, it is just the EU number crunchers who are corrupt! Thank goodness for that. I’ve been labouring under a misapprehension, all this time.
Fortunately, EU officials have said a full judicial inquiry will establish whether senior number crunching staff have indeed stolen EU funds. No doubt the results from this inquiry will be swift, and the punishments severe. Let’s hope they make some of these naughty number crunchers fly business class, for a change, rather than first class. For at least a whole week. They deserve nothing less.
I don’t know about Denmark but it sounds as if there is something rather rotten going on in the state of Italy according to this report in the UK Times:
ROMANS are to be offered cut-price family meals in a novel attempt by the city’s authorities to curb inflation that has plagued Italy since the introduction of euro notes and coins at the beginning of last year.
The scheme, called Shopping Sport, starts on October 1 in the city’s 140 street markets. Stallholders will be asked to offer shoppers a basket containing enough ingredients to make a meal for four people, including meat or fish, vegetables and dessert, for €12 (£8.34).
Restaurants, bars, hairdressers, garages, plumbers and supermarkets have also been asked to join the campaign. For example, restaurants will be expected to offer a starter, a pizza and a pudding for €12 — and it should be possible to get a morning cappuccino and croissant for €1.50 (£1.05). The authorities will publish a list of the businesses taking part.
Begging your pardon and all that, but doesn’t that sound an awful lot like price-fixing?
Newspapers run stories almost daily on the “real” inflation rate, which some put as high as 30%. Even everyday items such as bread and milk have risen by 16% and a bus ticket by 29% since December 2001, according to Consumer’s Contract, a group that lobbies for consumers’ rights.
Italians voted with their purses last week, staging a consumer “strike” in which as many as 40% of people were reported to have taken part in some areas. Further action is planned around Christmas. Some shops also shut for the day in a sign of solidarity with their customers.
And doesn’t that sound an awful lot like galloping inflation?
So galloping inflation and price-fixing. Isn’t that precisely the kind of Banana Republic economics that the introduction of the single currency was supposed to banish?
[My thanks to
Polly Toynbee poses the agonising question of the day:
Why are citizens everywhere dangerously inclined to stick two fingers up at Brussels if given the chance?
Because citizens are dangerous, Polly, they’re so dangerous. Stop giving them all these chances.
I feel a bit like the photographer sent to take snaps of village wedding for the local newspaper and who came back saying that there wasn’t story, because the bride didn’t show up.
I decided to check out the other BBC website (the tax-funded one) to see what convulsions the anti-euro vote from Sweden had caused.
The result was this rather unbalanced series of postings, supporting the Swedish NO result.
At the risk of inviting opprobrium, I must admit that the murder of Anna Lindh did have me reaching for the tin-foil to wrap around my head.
Even with the solid support of the entire Swedish political class, the ‘yes’ camp was still trailing the ‘no’ camp in every single opinion poll and it did briefly cross my mind that a ‘heroic sacrifice’ might have been arranged to swing the vote. The stakes here are certainly high enough.
But, on balance, probably not. Political assassination is common enough in Europe not to have to ascribe a conspiracy to this one. Even if there was more to her murder than meets the eye, it didn’t work. The Swedes voted ‘no’ to the Euro.
On any reading this is a blow for the EU project and the coming weeks will see a deluge of federast seething, threatening and whining. Their will has been thwarted and that it just intolerable. They will even try to float the notion that the result of the Swedish referendum was ‘undemocratic’. I also expect the Swedish government to begin agitating for another referendum to get the desired result but, given the margin of the ‘no’ victory, they may not get away with that.
Quite aside from all the furore and recriminations that are bound to follow, I wonder if this could be the catalyst which leads to the unravelling of the whole project. It isn’t very likely but neither is it altogether impossible. In fact, I quite like the idea of a ‘Euro-Watch’ sweepstake: who will be the first to bail out of the Euro?
For the record, my money (sterling!) is on the French. The Germans will stick with it because they have always had an emotional investment in the European project. It enables them to be ‘Europeans’ and thus serves to expiate their guilt about being German. They will endure a lot more economic pain before they begin to think the unthinkable.
But not the French. For them, the EU has always been about advancing their national interests. All the kumbaya mummery about a united Europe is just window-dressing to disguise the self-serving reality. If it looks like wrecking their economy (or, more particularly, it begins biting into the privileges of the political class) the French will simply dump the Euro and swan off to look for another boondoggle.
Not inevitable by any means, but possible. In anticipation, I would like to extend my thanks to the Swedish electorate. They may just have done us a great favour.
It’s around 8 pm London time, and so far the result is only in the form of exit polls, but it looks, touch wood, as if Sweden has voted NO to the EUro.
An exit poll suggests that Sweden has narrowly voted to reject the euro, in a referendum days after the killing of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.
The Swedish television poll of 7,000 people gives the No side 51.8% to the Yes side’s 46.2%.
Preliminary results are expected at 1930 GMT (2130 local time), one-and-a-half hours after polls closed.
Lindh was the main face of the Yes campaign, and her stabbing in a Stockholm department store appeared to trigger a last-minute sympathy vote.
Anna Lindh murdered. The Swedish establishment united in favour of the EUro. Yet still they couldn’t bully it through.
The establishment here is anything but united if favour of the EUro, so this result means that Britain is that much more unlikely to be joining it in the foreseeable future. So this is a big blow to the entire project.
I’ve been watching a EUro-yes-man on the TV saying that if Britain stays out of the EUro, that means that we’ll be in the same silly position as we’ve been in for the last fifty years, namely playing “catch-up”. We will eventually, grudgingly, joining a EUro-institution which we had very little part in shaping. But that’s a double-edged argument, because there is another way for Britain to be more decisive about the EU as a whole. We could get the hell right out of it. We wouldn’t be playing catch-up then, would we? The chances are, if the EU doesn’t meanwhile improve its economic policies, that we’d be the ones they’d then be trying to catch up with. Which is why I’ve never understood this argument that non-membership of the EU, or of the EUro, will diminish Britain’s power. Do you reckon that Sweden today is having no major impact upon the European Union?
Did Hong Kong, by “staying out of China” for so long, have no influence on China, just because its political bosses didn’t constantly share dinners with Red China’s bosses and constantly get told what to do by them, in exchange for the occasional “concession”, concerning, I don’t know, not locking up dissidents for a few more years? Did Hong Kong, by “going it alone”, thereby deny to itself “power”?
Meanwhile Estonia, in contrast, is definitely voting YES to joining the European Union as a whole, by a big margin. Having visited Estonia for several days about twelve years ago, I know all about that place. They were dead set on getting into the EU then, and on paying whatever was the price of entry, basically to protect themselves against any future that Russians might one day dream up for them. So it’s no surprise to me that this is still their majority attitude now. And if they don’t get any protection against Russia, they’ll leave the EU and look for another club to join.
There has not been much discussion in the blog world that I have seen of late about the British government’s apparent fierce determination to make us sign up to the proposed EU Constitution. While we ponder the difficulties of trying to establish some form of piece and liberty in Iraq, we ought to think a bit more about the threat to our liberties nearer to home.
Unlike some EU sceptics and foreign policy isolationists, I don’t elevate national sovereignty into some kind of religion. The only sovereignty I recognise is that over my own person. I take the practical view that if we are to try to reverse the trend towards ever bigger government, it will be even harder to achieve such a task at pan-European level than at the national one. In the UK we do – in a rough fashion – have a shared political tradition, a common language, and a broadly similar culture. While multi-lingual political unions are conceivable, they are not, as far as I can see, easily sustainable without a lot of positive factors such as shared cultural and economic interests, and so forth.
The fine print of the EU constitution is not the sort of thing to get voters charged up. But I have a sickly feeling in my stomach that unless the process is stopped very soon, we will wake up to find that the juggernaut of the State is even more resistant to control than ever before. Time is running short.
As mentioned by R. C. Dean in an earlier article, the fact that EU policy is a major contributor to poverty in the Third World is finally starting to attract the attention it deserves. Many of Samizdata.net’s contributors have written in the past about the true price of protectionism and just who pays it.
Well now the The Centre for the New Europe has released a devastating paper that shows the claims of the Euro-statist elite to care for the world’s ‘have-nots’ for what they are: complete lies
Key Findings
- 6,600 people die every day in the world because of the trading rules of the EU. That is 275 people every hour.
- In other words, one person dies every 13 seconds somewhere in the world – mainly in Africa – because the European Union does not act on trade as it talks.
- If Africa could increase its share of world trade by just one per cent, it would earn an additional £49 billion a year. This would be enough to lift 128 million people out of extreme poverty. The EU’s trade barriers are directly responsible for Africa’s inability to increase its trade and thus for keeping Africa in poverty.
- If the poorest countries as a whole could increase their share of world exports by five per cent, that would generate £248 billion or $350 billion, raising millions more out of extreme poverty.
The complete paper can be downloaded from the main CNE site
The Grauniad (of all papers) continues its libertarian crusade for free trade, slamming the EU’s continued protectionism of ag markets:
The European commission yesterday launched a ferocious attack on poor countries and development campaigners when it dismissed calls for big cuts in Europe’s farm protection regime as extreme demands couched in “cheap propaganda”.
In a move that threatens to shatter the fragile peace ahead of next week’s trade talks in Cancun, Mexico, Franz Fischler, the EU agriculture commissioner, said Brussels would strongly defend its farmers.
Note the condescending tone of the EUnik leading the charge on this one. Is it something they actually screen for? Is it in the water in Brussels?
“If I look at the recent extreme proposal co-sponsored by Brazil, China, India and others, I cannot help [getting] the impression that they are circling in a different orbit,” Mr Fischler reporters.
“If they want to do business, they should come back to mother earth. If they choose to continue their space odyssey they will not get the stars, they will not get the moon, they will end up with empty hands.”
Perhaps the big plus for free traders in all this is that this issue is not being posed as multinational corporations v. defenseless working class slobs (as antiglobalism is usually set up in the US), or as noble social democracies v. the evil capitalist US, but rather is put forth as poor and starving people v. coddled and protected industry.
Still, its a shame that it looks like the Doha round of negotiations will wither on the vine.
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