We've reported on the mess that is France and this by French lights. So it is not a surprise her big EU project is a mess also.

The European Union's financial watchdog refused to sign off the Brussels budget yesterday for the tenth year in a row, finding that 93.4 per cent of spending was either unsafe or riddled with errors.

The figures released by the European Court of Auditors were even worse than last year, when 91 per cent was deemed unsafe, chiefly due to abuses in the new member states in Eastern Europe.

A senior EU auditor said the £70 billion Brussels budget was "high risk" because most of it was doled out to member states, making it hard to track.

But he said commission insiders set a dreadful tone by behaving like "rats in a bag seeking to evade responsibility".

And this bad news:

Europe's demographic crisis could break public finances and slash growth to stall-speed within a decade, according to a wise-men's report published by the European Commission yesterday.

The grim study by an EU-wide panel of experts under Wim Kok, the former Dutch premier, found that Europe's strategy is a mush of "incoherence and conflicting priorities".

The Lisbon Strategy of overtaking America with a world-beating economy by 2010 risked becoming a "synonym for missed objectives and failed promises," the report said.

Far from catching up, Europe is on a sustained trajectory of lower productivity growth than the United States. EU per capita income has fallen below 70pc of the US level for the first time since the late 1960s.

Offering alarming detail, the 51-page report, Facing the Challenge, warned that Europe's ageing population would quickly snuff out the last few flickers of economic dynamism, cutting the growth speed limit from 2.25pc to just 1.5pc annually by 2015, and 1.25pc by 2040.

Then there is this:

EUROPE PLEADS WITH US TO BOLSTER DOLLAR

European leaders yesterday appealed to the United States to rein in its gaping current account and budget deficits and prevent the dollar falling further against the euro - but there was little sign the US was listening.

At a regular meeting in Brussels, eurozone finance ministers expressed growing concern that the euro was bearing the brunt of the dollar's fall rather than the Chinese currency, which is artificially pegged to the dollar. Growth in France and Germany, the bloc's two biggest economies, slumped to just 0.1% in the third quarter, according to figures out last week.

More bright news:

Germany's economic recovery will slow in 2005 as high oil prices and the strong euro threaten Europe's largest economy, the government's council of economic advisers said Wednesday.

The report said Germany's budget deficit likely will narrow next year to 3.5 percent of GDP from 3.9 percent this year. But that would still leave the country above the maximum 3 percent laid down by the EU for countries that use the euro.

Also see below.

But obstructionism continues to produce EU progress, if the enforcement of ideological purity is progress:

EUROPE EYES END TO LIMBO IN EU ASSEMBLY VOTE

EU lawmakers are expected finally to declare the European Union's new executive arm fit for office Thursday, ending an unprecedented three-week state of limbo for the expanding bloc.

The EU parliament, long considered the poor relation in the EU family, has made no secret of its delight at having given EU member states a bloody nose as it flexed its growing political muscle.

In France, Fox News = evil, bad, not allowed

Yet, French Hizbollah terrorist TV network broadcasts regular 'reports' on zionist plots to take over the world..More details here

Jewish groups have objected to a French government decision to allow the television arm of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrillas to continue broadcasting to Europe using a French satellite operator....

Behold France's fair and balanced news. Incredible