The work is being carried out by a new breed of EU quangos which, according to research about to be published, now cost more than a £1 billion a year to run. The quangos, which have increased 12-fold in number since 1990, include the European Institute for Gender Equality, charged with "improving knowledge and raising visibility of the equality between men and women", and the Fundamental Rights Agency, which aims to improve civil rights. The Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), meanwhile, sends £25 million a year on encouraging "cultural co-operation" and the "emergence of European citizenship". The EACEA, based in Brussels, has commissioned a "comparative analysis of folk tales" from different EU countries, to encourage the public to see the similarities and see themselves as part of a wider Europe. It has also commissioned a DVD and website to teach children the "common cultural heritage" to be derived from Europe's great gardens. It is also behind an initiative to reform First World War history lessons in schools. On its website, the body states: "This conflict is a good example of an event that has been treated for a long time from a national or nationalist standpoint. We intend to and subject it to methodology involving crossed viewpoints as a way of overcoming the narrow approach of national considerations, to propose a European reading of this part of our common history." It says the move would "enrich the considerations and practices of history teachers, who are helping to form future European citizens". However, the approach has been cricitised by experts in the UK. Andrew Roberts, the military historian and biographer, said: "It is impossible to see the history of the Great War other than in terms of one power setting out to try and dominate Europe. "To try and pretend otherwise, or to try and construe otherwise, is to distort history rather than to tell it as it actually happened." The spread of the EU quangos is revealed in research by two think tanks, the Economic Research Council and Global Vision, who have identified 36 such organisations. The report, The Essential Guide to EU Quangos 2009, will estimate that British taxpayers alone contribute £103 million a year towards the organisations' budgets. Dan Lewis of the Economic Research Council, one of the report's authors, said: "There is huge duplication with organisations we already have in this country. "There is the Food Safety Authority, but we already have no end of food safety bodies here. What real value can it add?" While some of the quangos are self-financing, most are subsidised by taxpayers. The largest subsidy, of 517 million euros (£477 million), went to the European Research Council, which funds scientific research. The report highlights an imbalance in the countries which host the organisations. While many EU member states host no EU quangos, Belgium hosts seven, Spain hosts five and Luxembourg hosts three. Britain hosts two: the European Medicines Agency, in London, and the European Police College, in Bramshill, Hampshire. Chris Heaton-Harris, Conservative MEP for the West Midlands, said: "These quangos are all places where power has been siphoned away from people who are elected." A European Commission spokesman said: "All agencies are approved and created in full agreement with the member states. They are regularly audited. "The Commission has proposed a moratorium on the establishment of new regulatory agencies until we have debated further a coherent architecture for the establishment of new agencies." No-one at the EACEA was available for comment.EU quangos study folk tales for Euro harmony
EU quangos are studying the similarities between European folk tales and even proposing a new non-"nationalistic" approach to the teaching of the First World War in a bid to forge a stronger European identity.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
Posts
