And graft-less incompetence is a major improvement in EU governance.
EU RECLAIMS MISSPENT AID, FRANCE MAIN OFFENDER
BRUSSELS, July 27, 2006 (AFP) - The European Commission on Thursday ordered seven European Union (EU) countries to pay back about EUR 160 million (202 million dollars) of misspent EU farm aid, with France the biggest offender.French authorities, long the fiercest critics of attempts to reform the EU'S generous agricultural subsidy system [the notorious Common Agricultural Policy*], will have to repay about EUR 86 million [53%], mostly handed out for ineligible land.
Under Thursday's EU commission decision, out of a total of EUR 161.9 million reclaimed, Spain will have to hand back 33 million [20%]; Italy 9 million [5.6%] and Greece 8 million [5%]. Portugal, Ireland, Britain also have to pay back smaller sums.The EU executive underlined that the repayments were not due to corruption or fraud, but simply for not following the rules under which aid is allowed to be paid out.
"This is a vital process in ensuring that taxpayers money is used properly** and that all unduly spent amounts are recovered," said Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.
When you consider that the CAP budget is some €44B, the intrepid EU auditors have squeezed out a full .4% of waste from expenditures. That is four-tenths of one percent for the weak-eyed. Ah, Mdm. et M. Europa taxpayer, rest easy. Your hard earned money is being properly distributed for a more equitable Europa, a more just world, a richer fatter France.
TO THE RICH, THE RICHES, OXFAM SAYS
LONDON November 7, 2005 (AFP) - Prince Albert of Monaco is among several seriously rich landowners raking in subdidies under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, the British humanitarian organisation Oxfam said Monday.It said the prince, who has a two-billion-euro personal fortune, received EUR 287,308 euros in subsidies for his 700-hectare cereal farm in northern France.
France gets around EUR 9.4 billion euros from the EUR 44bn CAP budget, it said, adding that its analysis of EU statistics that "show that the top 15 percent of French farming businesses consume a massive 60 percent of its direct payments."
"The new figures show that France's biggest 12 recipients each get more than EUR 500,000 a year in subsidies alone," Oxfam said. "The biggest two get EUR 1.7 million a year between them."
"This gives a lie to the French argument that it uses EU subsidies to support its small farmers," Oxfam added. "They plainly don't. Most small French farmers – 70 percent of them -- get only 17 percent of the subsidies doled out by Paris."
The Oxfam press release can be found here.
[All emphases added.]
* At the above link, the EU explains the purpose of the CAP thusly:The aim of the common agricultural policy is to provide farmers with a reasonable standard of living, consumers with quality food at fair prices and to preserve our rural heritage.
What is reasonable in France is 3x what is reasonable for Poland. Europe's food prices stubborningly remain the highest in the world. And the French farmer is a declining workforce (three-quarters attrited since 1950) and the number of French farms are shrinking (one-third attrited between 1993 and 2004).
** John Laughland, former lecturer at the Sorbonne and the Institute of Political Science in Paris, in the Telegraph, December 4, 2005:
Despite the propaganda about reform and a war on fraud, such organisations only grow ever more bloated, ever more baroque - and ever more corrupt. For the past 11 years in a row, the EU's court of auditors, which is supposed to be its "financial conscience", has refused to sign off the budget. Last month, the body stated that this was because "the vast majority of the payment budget was again materially affected by errors of legality and regularity".
PFFT (What is this?): Incompetence 4 | Incompetence caught out ¾ | Standing up for Prince Albert of Monaco 5 | Rayonnement français 0
