EU's 'Tolerable Risk' is Intolerable
The EU’s regional funds budget is one of the biggest.� In an average year there are some 700,000 recipients of public funds all over the 27 nation states.� The Court of Auditors claimed at a recent meeting of the Budget Control Committee of the European Parliament that they had audited 180 such transactions - barely 0.03 percent - during the audit of the 2007 accounts.
They found an 11 percent error rate on this tiny sample.� In itself, 11 per cent is an unlikely figure, since it means 19.8 of the sample showed mistakes.� Either it was 19 or it was 20.� It cannot have been 19.8.
The Court of Auditors also told the committee that the errors they found included incompetence, honest mistakes and fraud, but it was not a matter for the Court to decide.� Any fraud issues should be investigated by OLAF, the European Commission’s in-house financial police force.
But OLAF has been accused of corruption itself, ever since it was set up.� In more than a decade, OLAF has never successfully prosecuted a case in court and then recovered the missing public funds.
Statisticians may think a sample of 0.03% gives a reliable indication of a trend, but I remain to be convinced.
Meanwhile, the Commission’s target of a “tolerable level of risk” of four percent gathers support amongst EU aficionados as an easy way out of an insoluble problem.
Not for the first time, and despite my being a full member of the committee, the chairman managed to run out of time before giving me the floor on the regional funds debate.� This is what I planned to say:
“There is no ‘tolerable level’ of error - whatever its cause.� That is the soft approach to mistakes of all kinds.� Even small percentages, when multiplied by the size of EU government, become big numbers.� And these increases tend to be logarithmic - the square rather than the sum.
In reality, ‘tolerable error’ attempts to define the difference between genuine individual mistakes and weaknesses in the system.� It is an impossible task.
The essence of successful statesmanship ought to be based on the political theory of holes.� When in a hole, you stop digging.� Sadly, the European Commission in general, and Mr Kallas as its protector of the public purse in particular, have yet to understand that lesson.”
None of which eases the situation in which hard-pressed taxpayers find themselves, especially in the present economic climate.
Two New Written Questions to the Commission
Working Time Directive Will Cost Lives
Does the Commission fully understand the consequences of the working time directive on future standards of medical care?
Socialists claimed after the parliamentary vote on the WTD that junior doctors had done well to reduce their working hours.
But does the Commission not know that one of the most important, direct and unavoidable consequences of the WTD will be to prevent those same junior doctors from acquiring the same body of knowledge and experience as their predecessors?
Junior doctors will not have learned and practised under supervision to the same level of skill as the present generation of doctors, nor will they be able to conduct their procedures with the same certainty and confidence.� Either that, or they train for many more years before qualifying.
More immediately, the medical services will encounter day-to-day practical problems which will endanger lives at the very least.� They tell me there will be dangerous lapses in hospital care as doctors pass incomplete procedures from one to the next, simply because an arbitrary time-limit has been reached.� Out-of-hours cover in hospitals, casualty units and surgeries will become non-existent at times, and special units such as isolation wards will find themselves without medical support altogether, thus putting not just other patients but potentially whole communities at risk.
Now does the Commission understand that there will be cases which result in the death of patients who could have been saved?
If so, what urgent changes and dispensations will be made to the directive to avoid these catastrophes?
Otherwise, won’t those deaths lie at the door of the Commission and all those who drafted and supported the WTD?
Support for EU Erodes Further in UK - Mark 2
The bland reply from Mrs Wallstrom to my question E-6169/08 says the Commission tracks public opinion about the EU.� We knew this already.� It also claims to “promote informed debate”, which we have heard many times before.
Does the Commission not agree that these answers are almost comic, were it not for the horrific facts that they ignore?
Is it not correct that the British fishing industry has been virtually destroyed over the last 35 years and tens of thousands of people have been put out of work, directly as a result of EU interference?
Is not the list of other industries and business areas put to the sword by the EU over those same 35 years scandalously long, economically destructive, and yet more reason for the UK to leave this (adjective deleted) institution?� Has the Commission somehow missed even these few I have dealt with over the years - aviation control systems, mercury in antique barometers, and now pesticides and aluminium plants?
Is it any surprise Mrs Wallstrom has always steadfastly refused to attend any meeting in the UK - which I offered to arrange at any time and place to suit her diary - and even cancels parliamentary meetings when I turn up?
That is not communication.� It is even less “informed debate”.� Is it not an utter abrogation of responsibility?
Mrs Wallstrom may have given up on the UK.� But we have not given up on holding her and the rest of the Commission to account
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