Bulgaria Lobbies for a Pro-Corruption Vote They Picked the Wrong Man
19 March 2009
The deputy prime minister of Bulgaria, Dr Meglena Plugtschieva, visited my office in Strasbourg last week, accompanied by an entourage of four aides. She came to plead that her country should not be penalised by the withdrawal of EU funds because it is corrupt. No, I joke not!
Last July the EU rightly suspended payments under the one billion euro allocation to Bulgaria amid evidence of systematic corruption there. Example: a road scheme funded with EU money was let by the MD of the agency managing the project to a building firm run by his brother. In another case, two men were found by OLAF (the EU's financial investigation agency) to be running a corruption racket while enjoying the protection of ministers and sponsoring the election campaign of the president.
The timing of Dr Meglena Plugtschieva's arrival in my office was spot on – the European Parliament’s Budget Control Committee, on which I have a seat, was to vote next week on the allocation and control of public funds.
The deputy PM argued that Greece, Spain, Italy and some other members of the EU were just as corrupt in their use of public funds as Bulgaria, so there was no reason to make her country an exception.
I listened politely, in increasing astonishment, and made a few points of my own.
Her socialist government had (only just) survived as many as eight recent votes of no-confidence, which gave me a sense of unease. I also knew that many applications in Bulgaria for EU funds were first turned down by the government, and then accepted when re-submitted by socialist supporter groups. This was denied…but it would be, wouldn’t it?
Then, when Dr Plugtschieva had finished, I asked a few simple, basic questions of my own:
1. How would she suggest I justified such a policy of irresponsible financial indulgence to the taxpayers of the UK, who would be financing such mischief to the tune of some £1500 each per year?
2. Did she approve of the EU’s new invention of “tolerable risk” which meant that up to four cent of the total budget (of over 300 billion euros a year) could disappear before anyone in Brussels got excited about corruption, fraud, waste, incompetence, and mismanagement?
3. Did she think the ‘shared management’ of financial responsibility between the EU as the source, and the member states or NGOs within them as the recipients, was a viable means of controlling public funds, and if so why? (One of the deputy prime minister’s aides had to spell out in Bulgarian what ‘shared management’ is. It seemed no-one had previously told her.)
4. Why was the endemic corruption of other governments justification for more corruption rather than less?
5. Why did she think the visit of OLAF investigators to Bulgaria made any difference to the situation, if all they found was evidence of corruption?
6. Why had the EU’s Court of Auditors visited Bulgaria only once, and then only briefly, to carry out an audit of the use of EU money by the Bulgaria government? Were they not welcome?
I don’t need to spell out the answers I got. Almost all generalised waffle about the need to stand together! She soon got the message, polite but firm - not in my office we don’t.
Dr Plugtschieva departed with my suggesting Bulgaria consider adopting the policies of the only country in the world to audit its public accounts to international financial accounting standards - New Zealand.
I also mentioned that the instigator of this remarkable achievement had made a presentation to the EP’s Budget Control Committee some three years or more ago, and that he had been totally ignored. But he has just been invited to Washington to advise the new Obama administration. To respond to, or comment on this Email, please email ashley.mote@btconnect.com
Thursday, 19 March 2009
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