Britannia Radio

18 May 2009 The Great European Rip-Off - A Must Read If you haven’t read it already, may I recommend a recent book by David Craig and Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers Alliance. The Great European Rip-Off is published in paperback by Random House and retails for £8.99. It is an outstanding summary of the current situation. As a member of the European Parliament’s Budget Control Committee for the last five years I am exceptionally well placed to confirm its accuracy and perspicacity. Indeed, I even learnt a thing or two! In a letter to the authors, congratulating them on their book, I did add a few observations which might be of wider interest: There is no doubt whatever that the British taxpayer would not benefit from monies retained in the EU pot, having not been spent. Virtually every year I have been in the parliament the EU has under-spent. Nonetheless they have kept every penny. The European Parliament’s administration is very heavy on elected MEPs whose policies and attitudes do not meet with its approval. There has been endless scrutiny of my use of political and staff allowances which far exceeds the norm, and this was the case with most of my colleagues who are less than enthusiastic about the EU. For example, recently, several weeks of staff time has been taken up in closing the accounts of the ITS group, where there was a dispute over 1,027 euros. I estimate the cost of the staff time and overheads involved at well over 100,000 euros. Meanwhile the institutionalised looting of some 80% of the entire EU budget goes on unchecked. The change from fixed travel allowances to "actual costs" after the next election will result in higher costs to taxpayers. In answer to my questions the administrators have admitted that the system will be more expensive and that it will also require more staff to administer it. The reason is simple. In future there will be no incentive to buy anything but the most expensive (first class) flexible ticket available. The idea of fixed allowances is well established in many European commercial enterprises, and yes, it can be abused by those with the inclination to do so. Most boards of directors take the view that that is a tolerable price to pay for the expensive alternative. In my opinion the EU should have taken the same view. The book refers to 247 advisory committees and 1,047 expert groups. This figure is a serious understatement. The Danish MEP Peter Bonde and I established in about 2005/6 that there were 3000 secret committees advising the Commission and I have the names of all 3000 on my website in English. The book mentions the fines imposed on EU states who do not abide by the EU's directives, regulations or instructions. But it does not mention that most of these fines are never paid and this particularly applies to the fines imposed on France. Questions of the Commission about this negligence of enforcement have yielded no more than highly evasive answers from Mrs Grybauskaite, the Budget Commissioner, on the European Parliament website. In the reference to Eurobarometer research into public opinion about the EU the authors could have mentioned that, until very recently, the UK was permanently at the bottom of the list in terms of public support. Recent surveys have, at times, put Austria and Latvia below us. In the section on the media there is no mention of the fact that the BBC receives substantial money from the EU generally in the form of uncommercial loans. The total is now in excess of 400 million euros. That tells you all you need to know about the reluctance of the BBC to report eurosceptic opinion objectively, or at all. Finally, and with reluctance, I must profoundly disagree with the authors' assumptions that the European Union is reformable. When I first became a MEP a leading UK lawyer who had had many years dealings with the EU and its various institutions told me that it was his considered opinion the EU was "irredeemable corrupt and beyond redemption". I have seen nothing in the last five years to contradict his opinion. Indeed I share it fully. The notion that the EU could voluntarily change its culture is, frankly, naïve. It also flies in the face of the treaties themselves. A significant part of the EU's founding Treaty of Rome (1956) is to be found inEuropaische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (The European Economic Community) prepared in 1942 by Hitler's chief economic advisor. The history of the EU and its origins shows that it was always intended to become a United States of Europe, however long it took and however much deceit was necessary. In 1944, the senior hierarchy under Hitler called a conference in Berlin the title of which was "How will Germany dominate the peace when it loses the war?" At the funeral of Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the EU, Edmond Rothschild was quoted as saying "The Europe of Jean Monnet is a Europe in which there would no longer be any states but only federated regions. We shall no longer say that we are French, German or British but we shall say 'I am a European and a Bavarian or I am a European and a Scotsman'. Professor Piskozub of Gdansk University recently observed "the disintegration of European states is a healing process that will lead to the integration of Europe as a whole". In July 1999 the then President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, confirmed the remarks of a German MEP who had said "the Parliament and the Commission are allies against the member states. Together we have to prevent the member states from taking back power". Nothing has changed. Ashley Mote MEP An Afterthought: Years ago I suggested that the EU was a 1950's solution to the problems of the 1930's. If you were starting again today, nobody in their right mind would invent the EU.   To respond to, or comment on this Email, please email ashley.mote@btconnect.com