The EU is Corrupt

The EU budget has not been approved by the European Court of Auditors this year. In case you don't know what that means, it means that the EU can't balance the books. An excellent article by Daniel Hannan in today's Telegraph explains it very well. Hannan seems to suggest that some 60% of the budget fails to meet approval. Some is being used fraudulently, some is being used improperly, huge amounts just disappear. According to Hannan, the amount being lost in "outright graft" (I'm assuming he means bribes here) is rather larger than the annual British net contribution to the EU. I don't know what our "net" contribution is, but apparently our gross contribution is more than £12 billion a year.

£12 billion ladies and gentlemen! Let me put that in perspective. That's £200 a year for every living person in Britain, for the privilege of being European. Let's assume that half of the population are tax payers. That's £400 each. And that is one third of my bleeding council tax bill. That's getting the car serviced twice. That's a whole wardrobe of clothes for my son. That's 8 weeks' groceries, 100 packs of 36 nappies, 8 weeks' commuting expenses, half an air ticket to Taiwan, or two new radiators and a skip to remove the crap from our garden. And this is the money they just lost last year.

And you know what the really hysterical thing is? It's not the fact that I'm forced at gun point to pay this bloody money. It's not the fact that I receive bugger all in return from Europe. It's not even the fact that all Europe seems to do is pass legislation that makes my life more difficult and expensive. No, the really hysterical thing is that this is the 13th consecutive year, yes 13th, that this has happened. Every year, for the past 13 years, the auditors have come out of Brussels unable to tell me where my money has gone.

The EU commission is trying to shift blame to member states. They tried the same trick last year. They claim that the member states are being allocated funds, and are not documenting how they are used. If that's the case, I have a radical plan to stop it - don't give them any more money. Better yet, if they can't account for money they have already received, demand it back, and don't give them any more until you get it.

The EU Budget Committee president, one Terry Wynn, seems to think that no real problem exists. According to Terry, "It is like the auditors for the supermarket chain, Tesco, doing the audits and saying, overall, the books are in order but they know there is shoplifting going on somewhere yet cannot say exactly where". No Terry, it's nothing like that at all. It's like the Tesco auditors going in and saying "£10 million was allocated to pay for fuel for the delivery vans, and they only used half of it. We don't know where the other £5 million went, but there were a lot of really great staff parties last year".