EU gives our money as "aid" to - er - Russia

This should perhaps alert the media to the iniquities of the EU - but
it won’t!
With half the countries in the EU having their work cut out to
balance their budgets (and largely failing) it is a crying scandal
that we are giving oiur money to a regime which commits murder in
this country and will divert the money to buy armaments to invade its
neighbours.

The EU, however, is engaged in its usual task of centralising
patronage as well as power in Brussels.

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TELEGRAPH Blogs “Three Line Whip”
18.8.08 - Alan Singleton
Why is Britain’s development aid going to relatively affluent Russia?

Given Russia's oil reserves and its poor international behaviour over
recent years, you might think it would be an unlikely recipient of
British foreign aid. Yet the EU, through which we funnel a third of
our international development spending, has no qualms about
squandering our cash supposedly earmarked for the world's poorest on
Russia and other emerging economies. For the Brussels elite, aid
spending is about building up the EU role in foreign policy, rather
than saving lives.

One ill-conceived aid project that won Brussels' support was the
harmonisation of Russia's road standards with those of the EU. It was
only after lots of cash had been spent, and machinery bought, that
people realised that there is no collective European standard. The
scheme was eventually abandoned.

There is certainly an argument that aid and foreign policy should go
hand it hand. If this is sound reasoning, then having the EU control
aid is especially worrying because such control may undermine British
national interests. And if you believe that aid should be purely
aimed at poverty relief, then that's another reason to repatriate aid
spending; after all, the UK's focus has notably been on the poorest
countries.

In addition to all this, since EU aid is notably bureaucratic, with
8.7 per cent going on administration (compared with 5 per cent for
aid spent directly by the UK), the advice of a report from think tank
Open Europe that EU member states back control of our aid spending is
compelling