Posted on 11/14/2007 2:39:35 PM PST by knighthawk
The shocking thing is that we're no longer shocked. Yesterday, for the thirteenth consecutive year, the European Court of Auditors refused to approve the EU budget.
If this happened to a government department, it would be front page news. If it happened to a private corporation, directors would be facing prison terms. But, because it's Brussels, we flex our shoulders in a shrug so disdainful as to be almost Gallic. Yup, the EU is corrupt. Et alors?
It's true that the story has become familiar: the Court of Auditors has never once signed off on the accounts.
It's true, too, that the auditors' report is long and detailed, and no longer gives an aggregated figure for the spending for which it cannot account - although, on my maths, around 60 per cent of the budget fails to meet approval. It may even be true that things are slightly improving, at least in agriculture. But, even so, we ought to be outraged.
The amount being lost in outright graft is higher than Britain's net contribution. A still larger sum is being "irregularly" allocated - to take one example, millions of euros intended to support farmers are being claimed by golf clubs. And even the bits that are being properly spent often go on boondoggles: a Labour council in my constituency recently advertised a six-month EU-funded sabbatical "to study the impact of gender mainstreaming in the field of waste management".
Why, then, are we so fatalistic about the whole business? After all, it's hardly as if the sums involved are small. Britain's gross contribution to the EU budget is more than £12 billion a year - enough to scrap inheritance tax, stamp duty and capital gains tax. Why aren't we angrier?
Partly because we have come to understand that corruption, in so large a bureaucracy, is institutional: a product of how the EU is structured.
"To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men," wrote Edmund Burke. Accordingly, the European Commission worked out a system where it would get the credit for spending money, but the member states would have to raise the necessary taxes. In consequence, Eurocrats tend to spray their grants around indiscriminately, hoping to buy popularity with every cheque.
The national authorities, for their part, have little incentive to police the system. Because the grants come from Brussels, it is not "their" money that is being wasted. And so a whole class of people is brought into existence whose livelihoods depend on the existing European budgetary arrangements: civil servants, big landowners, council leaders, Jean Monnet professors, lobbyists, contractors, aid agencies and pressure groups.
This class is larger than is generally supposed. A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a meeting at the European Parliament for a network of towns from around the EU. There were perhaps a hundred people present, of whom only four were elected representatives. All the others were functionaries. And not just any old functionaries: they were, by and large, the "European Officers" of their respective municipalities - people, in other words, whose mortgages were being informally underwritten by the EU.
Whenever I asked them to give me examples of what they did, they would reply that they liaised with the Commission, drove innovation and spread best practice. Fair enough, I'd say, but what do you actually, you know, do? "Didn't you hear what I just said? We liaise with the Commission, drive innovation and spread best practice!"
This is what we're up against. The EU is no longer an ideological project, but a racket - a mechanism for redistributing wealth to people who, directly or indirectly, are on its payroll.
And these people, of course, include MEPs, who are notionally in charge of scrutinising the budget. Some do so with exemplary assiduity.
My colleague James Elles, for example, is constantly looking for ways to reduce expenditure. But most Euro-MPs balk at the idea of withholding money from the project. They know that their own expenses regime is far from exemplary and so, their own house being made with panes of the flimsiest crystal, they are reluctant to start lobbing rocks.
As for the taxpayers, they seem to have subsided into a resigned funk. For a long time, voters' apathy depressed me. Then I had a conversation with someone who used to be a marriage guidance counsellor. A marriage, she said, can sustain any number of rows: as long as you're arguing, it means your partner's opinion matters. It is when the rows give way to scorn, she said, that the marriage is over.
What a perfect description of Britain's attitude to the EU. When I was first elected eight years ago, I used to get furious letters about Euro-fraud. Who the hell were these shameless Euro-creeps? Could no one control them?
But those letters have gradually dropped off. Anger has turned to contempt.
People have given up on any hope of reform: they know that Brussels will never change and, in truth, they no longer much care. Sooner or later, almost matter-of-factly, they will initiate divorce proceedings.
• Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South East England
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The more significant question is, “Why aren’t we shocked by a corrupt US government?” Has malaise drifted across the pond, or did it arrive on a ghost cargo plane?
Have auditors ever investigated the UN budget?
Well, it is Europe n'est ce pas?
The EU will fall apart...much like Brussels is.
This is what we’re up against. The EU is no longer an ideological project, but a racket - a mechanism for redistributing wealth to people who, directly or indirectly, are on its payroll.
I think most all of us knew long ago that the EU would fail in its objectives. The more power a government has, the more it will fail. People don’t change by being given more opportunity for graft.
I really do hope it falls apart. We don’t need a EUSSR morphing into Eurostan. With a highly centralized government it will make total Islamicization so much easier. It will reach to all corners of Europe evenly. There will be no holdouts.
BuHuHaHa! I need oxygen. Where can I sign in???!
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