Eurotrash - The latest from Brussels
WORKERS, DEC 2005 ISSUE
EU fails audit test (again)
The EU'S Court of Auditors said it could not vouch for almost all of the £68 billion spent by Brussels last year because fraud checks were still not in place – the 11th year running that the accounts have failed to be approved. Court President Hubert Weber told the budgetary control committee that he could not sign off on the EU's agricultural spending, its structural fund payments, its internal policy payments or its external actions payments.The man who broke the bank...
Prince Albert II of Monaco, whose fortune is estimated at two billion euros (£1.4 billion), received 287,308 euros in subsidies from the EU through the Common Agricultural Policy last year for farm land in France. France's 2,530 largest farm operators get more subsidies than its 182,270 smallest farms, about 40% of the total.
Rebate? What rebate?
EU President Jose Barroso has insisted that Britain must give up its EU budget rebate in order to reach an agreement on the budget. He said that Britain benefits from a "rebate that is not justified at the current time" and should accept its "modernisation".
Naughty Hungary
Brussels is demanding that Hungary cut its infrastructure investment and social welfare benefits to meet the EU's targets laid down in the growth and stability pact, even though Hungary is not a member of the Eurozone. Hungarian Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, has reacted angrily to the EU's threats to withhold development funds unless Hungary obeys.
It's not dead, say Germans
As part of the new German coalition agreement, both the CDU and the SPD have pledged to use the German 2007 presidency of the EU to revive the EU Constitution. They say, "We stand for the European constitutional treaty ... We pledge to continue the ratification of the European constitutional treaty." The new coalition is to pursue budget consolidation as its economic priority, which will most likely turn the five-year-long EU-imposed stagnation into a full-scale depression.