German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU President Herman Van RompuyWHY I BELIEVE IT IS TIME FOR BRITAIN
TO GET OUT OF THE EU
THE European Union’s disdain for normal concepts of honesty, justice or integrity is illustrated by its treatment of its staff. A report published this week highlighted the leniency of the Brussels machine towards employees found guilty of even serious offences. Incredibly one official convicted of “running a brothel” was allowed to keep his job.
This lack of discipline is in contrast to the ruthlessness used by the EU against its internal critics. Anyone from within the organisation who challenges the regime is likely to be hounded from office.
That was the fate of Marta Andreasen, sacked as the European Commission’s chief accountant in 2004 after she exposed widespread abuses within financial procedures. Instead of listening to her, top Eurocrats embarked on a campaign to get rid of her.
That disgraceful episode shows where the priorities of the EU lie. The Brussels elite is interested only in maintaining its own privileges and power. Waste, venality, and misuse of public money are now integral to the culture of the EU.
On Tuesday, the European Court of Auditors refused to give the EU accounts a clean bill of health for the 16th year in succession because of serial errors and irregular payments.
Rejecting the accounts has become an annual ritual in Brussels. Eurocrats, insulated in their cocoon of appropriated wealth, just ignore the auditors’ verdict. Nothing ever changes within the inner circle of corruption. No private company would be allowed to get away with such scandalous behaviour over its finances. Shareholders would revolt. Customers would leave.
Insolvency would beckon. Yet the EU moves in precisely the opposite direction, grabbing more power for itself and seizing more of our cash. While national governments throughout Europe are forced to adopt severe austerityprogrammes to cope with their fiscal deficits, profligacy within Brussels continues to spiral out of control. Earlier this year it was revealed that £800 million is being spent on an EU cultural programme to make young people “feel European”. Among the taxpayer-funded activities in this scheme are a Serbian project using silent-movie slap-stick to encourage “non-verbal communication” and an initiative in Finland to promote afternoon naps as a means of reducing stress.
Even more outrageous is the prodigality of the EU’s burgeoning diplomatic empire headed by Baroness Cathy Ashton, a Labour nonentity who has never been elected to public office but now commands an annual package worth £313,000 as the Commission’s Foreign Minister, a post created by the Lisbon Treaty.
No one in Britain ever voted for the EU to have its own foreign service, yet now we find that Lady Ashton has taken charge of an organisation that will soon have a budget of £6 billion, a workforce of 7,000 and a network of 137 embassies across the globe, with 46 diplomats based in the Caribbean resort of Barbados and six on the tiny Pacific island of Vanuatu, which has a population of just 230,000. Back in Brussels, the huge headquarters of Ashton’s empire is annually costing £10.5 million alone, while she has also ordered a £32 million fleet of bullet-proof limousines.
“Impossible to put a price on safety,” she airily declares like some spendthrift aristocrat. What is so sickening is that we derive absolutely no benefit from our membership of the EU. On the contrary, it is a crippling burden that has undermined our economy, destroyed our borders, wrecked our justice system and obliterated our independence.
We have been forced to pay for our own demise. We no longer have any real say over our laws or who has the right to settle here.
With our sovereignty removed, our democracy is now a farce. Last week thanks to Europe, the Government was told that it would have to give prisoners the vote, even when such a move is opposed by the overwhelming majority of people.
Similarly, EU decisions mean that our creaking public infrastructure is forced to cope with vast influxes of immigrants, a problem that will worsen dramatically if Turkey is given EU membership. If that happens, 70 million Turkish Muslims will have the right to settle anywhere in Europe. Economic growth was supposed to be the prime justification for the European Union. But the financial crisis has completely blown that argument apart.
In fact, the sclerotic bureaucracy of Brussels has left Europe unable to compete with the dynamic economies of Asia, while the EU has only worsened the indebtedness of member states. Indeed, nations which were once the loudest supporters of the EU and received the biggest subsidies, such as Ireland and Greece, are now Europe’s basket cases and could soon drag us all to the brink of bankruptcy.
The economic case was really just a cover for the two real purposes of the EU. The first was the personal enrichment of a cadre of officials in Brussels who can enjoy colossal influence and wealth without ever being held to account by the public. The second driving force is the European progressives’ dogmatic hatred of nationhood and patriotism.
The EU is their perfect vehicle for smashing the nation state, subsuming it within their ideal of governance by a politically correct elite.
The EU juggernaut will not be halted. Our only hope for national survival is to leave the institution.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Politics List
I think a light has just come on - in the Daily Express offices!
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by Leo McKinstry
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