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 Latest
EU budget factsheet: What MPs are saying and why they're
wrong
25th July 2006
If MPs approve
the EU budget deal Blair did in December when it comes before
Parliament later this year, from 2007 Britain's payments to
the EU will increase to £6 billion a year. That's £115 million
every week, even taking into account our rebate and EU grants
we receive back.
As part
of our Stop the Cheques campaign against this
massive increase in our payments to the EU despite the continuing
inability of even the EU's auditors to tell how most of the
money is spent, DM supporters have been sending imitation cheque
leaflets to MPs to ask them to explain how they can be satisfied
with this situation or, if not, what they are doing to halt
this waste of so much money.
This second
DM factsheet on the EU budget sets out six of the main points
some MPs have made in their letters to defend Blair's EU budget
deal - and explains why they're wrong.
MPs SAY:
"The budget deal was many millions of pounds smaller
than those proposals tabled earlier"
REALITY:
It's worth noting that MPs do not attempt to dispute the figures
we use in our Stop the Cheques campaign. And when the
net cost is to be £115 million every week, it's insulting
that MPs think we should be grateful that the give-away wasn't
'many millions' more.
That the
bill could have been even bigger is no justification for the
huge increase in payments that Tony Blair has agreed to.
What's
more, no benefit can be claimed for handing this money to
the EU while auditors can't explain to any norms of financial
accountability where the majority of the cash then goes.
The key
question is where are these annual extra billions for the
EU going to come from? Which public services will Blair's
successor have to cut, or taxes raise, to pay for his generosity
to the EU?
MPs SAY:
"We were instrumental in setting up the EU's anti-fraud office,
OLAF"
REALITY:
This is far from a reassuring claim. OLAF was the EU body
behind the outrageous treatment of Hans-Martin Tillack - a
German journalist for Stern magazine, who was investigating
EU fraud.
On OLAF's
orders, Tillack's home and office were ransacked and his computer,
archives and personal papers confiscated in an effort to discover
his sources. He is still trying to retrieve his possessions
and papers through legal action today.
Neither
did OLAF resolve the Eurostat fraud scandal, which exposed
slush funds belonging to the European Commission that had
been channelled to unofficial bank accounts and used for unauthorised
purposes. The officials found to be involved remain on full
pay or enjoying a full EU pension. But revealing the fraud
cost the whistleblower her job.
OLAF's
actions show that it's not so much anti-fraud as anti people
finding out about it.
MPs SAY:
"The government strongly supported the setting up of the
Commission's internal audit service"
REALITY:
It's useful that MPs should bring up the Commission's internal
audit service.
Just over
a year ago the retiring head of this very body, Jules Muis,
described the EU's accounting system as "chronically
sordid" and condemned the EU's Budget Directorate
as being in "persistent denial of the real nature and
depth of the problems".
[Daily
Telegraph, 15 March 2005].
If the
government claims credit for this body being set up, why then
are they not listening to the very serious comments of its
former chief? Why
are they not acting on them and moving urgently to protect
public money rather than pledging to hand over billions more?
MPs SAY:
"The government strongly supported the Whistleblowers'
Charter introduced by Neil Kinnock… we pressed strongly for
such procedures to be enshrined in the new Staff Regulations
that came into force in May 2004"
REALITY:
This 'Whistleblowers' Charter' is not new and has proved completely
ineffective.
It was
originally launched by Neil Kinnock in 1999 after the revelations
of a whistleblower forced the European Commission to resign.
But since
then there have been numerous further examples of whistle-blowers
having been vilified by EU institutions and forced out of
their jobs for revealing fraud: Dorte Schmidt-Brown, Robert
McCoy, Dougal Watt and Marta Andreasen, to name just a few.
Whatever
regulations the charter was 'enshrined' within in 2004, that
clearly didn't stop Kinnock himself sacking Marta Andreasen
in 2005, in one of his last acts as an EU Commissioner.
That was
before retiring to enjoy his £272,808 pay-off, his £63,900
a year EU pension and take up his seat in the House of Lords
(the existence of which he used to oppose) as Baron Kinnock
of Bedwelty.
MPs SAY:
"the Government is concerned about the fact that the European
Court of Auditors has not been able to give the EU accounts
a clean bill of health ….However, this is not equivalent to
a finding of fraud."
REALITY:
After 11 consecutive years of EU accounts failing to get auditors'
approval, only "concerned"? Clearly not quite concerned enough
to resist handing billions more to the EU every year.
Although
it is fair to say this long record of audit failure doesn't
necessarily indicate fraud, there are however many
well-documented examples of fraud to show exactly what's
happening.
From scandals
involving the EU's own institutions such as Eurostat and the
Committee of the Regions, to MEPs claiming expenses they're
not entitled to and regular reports of fraud in the awarding
of EU grants and contracts. The evidence is everywhere.
So why
don't MPs stop trying to gloss over this serious problem when
so much public money is at stake?
This isn't
an abstract international affairs matter. This
lack of control of public money directly affects schools,
hospitals, pensions, council tax and much else in their own
constituencies, for which they will be held locally accountable.
MPs SAY:
"transactions underlying the financial statements for 2004
were legal and regular in respect of revenue, commitments, and
administrative payments"
REALITY:
Payments made under these parts of the budget amount to
just 10% of overall spending, and even approval for these
was qualified with the identification of "weaknesses".
Yet in
areas such as agricultural spending, structural measures,
internal policies and external action - spending that amounts
to over £60 billion - auditors could once again not
approve the EU's accounts as 'legal and regular'.
On releasing
his most recent report, the head of the EU Court of Auditors
Hubert Weber said "The Court found that the vast majority
of the payments' budget was materially affected by errors
of legality and regularity in the underlying transactions".
[EU
Court of Auditors press release, 15 November 2005 (PDF)].
What part
of "vast majority" don't MPs understand?
DOWNLOAD:
-
Brown's
budget: what if we Stop the Cheques? more
>>
-
Blair's EU budget myths exposed more
>>
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