How the EU Wastes Your Money
The European Union budget between 2007 and 2013 is estimated to be around €975 billion, or £875 billion. According to the Treasury, the UK pays almost £10 billion a year into the EU’s budget. On average (after the rebate, which is about to be struck down), we get back about £5.2 billion.
Britain’s net contribution will go from £3 billion in 2009–10 (from a gross contribution of £7.6 billion) to £6.4 billion in 2011–12 (from a gross contribution £12 billion), according to the Treasury’s projection. The UK is also the EU country that receives the least back from the budget per head.
According to a recent report issued by the Open Europe think tank, the EU is the cause of a massive amount of waste. The report, entitled “Open Europe’s 50 New Examples of EU Waste” reveals a large number of projects, funded by the taxpayers, which border on the bizarre, if not the criminal.
A few of the examples cited by Open Europe:
- €173,000 for a luxury golf resort, the Monte da Quinta Club, in the Algarve, Portugal, where guests can choose between “the comfort of a villa with garden and private pool, or be dazzled by deluxe suites”. There is also a luxury spa, health club, several restaurants and bars, shops and a hairdresser.
- €2,500 for the Chairman of Porsche’s hunting retreat. Wolfgang Porsche, supervisory board Chairman of Porsche, received €2,500 in EU rural development funds for a small estate in Bavaria, Germany, where he goes hunting in his free time.
- €100,000 for a luxury Spanish hotel chain. €99,877 in EU funds for 2009 alone were granted to Tils Curt, a chain of luxury restaurants and hotels across Spain, established in 1880. The funds were given as part of the Regional Development Fund.
- “Donkeypedia”: the blogging donkey. As part of the EU’s €7 million “Year of Intercultural Dialogue” initiative, the European Commission ran an art education project called “Donkeypedia”, in which a donkey travels through the Netherlands, and primary school children meet and greet the donkey.
The aim of the project was “creating a reflection of all European identities. What are the similarities, what are the differences? What is it that makes Europe as unique as it is? Donkeypedia will try to make this feeling tangible by interacting and in dialogue with its surroundings while walking a European route through several countries and collecting data to support this image.” The donkey, named Asino, also maintained a blog throughout the walk. One entry reads: “We started really early today, Cristian slept in a bed in a house. It was a crazy morning waking up. I was under a chestnut tree sleeping in sand, when I opened my eyes there were animals all looking at me. I was embarrassed! Now I understand a little how people from different cultures may feel in the Netherlands.”
- €850,000 for a ‘gender equal’ wood design centre. Local politicians in Orsa, a village of 5,000 inhabitants in Sweden, wanted a new wood ‘design centre’, describing the idea as “a catalyst and meeting place for all creative activities”. The project description stressed that “the building would clearly display a gender equality design.”
The project won co-financing from the EU’s structural funds, which provided €850,000 of the €1.7 million that was budgeted for the project. However, when the funds ran out, the politicians decided to combine the wood design centre with the village’s other EU project, a wildlife centre, which had cost €3.2 million up to that point. The wildlife centre was in need of a spectacular new entrance hall — which became the wood centre. In their final report on the project the politicians confessed the building had not necessarily promoted cultural events, but proudly emphasised that all parts of the building were “equally accessible regardless of gender.”
Many others are listed in the Open Europe report which can be downloaded in full by clicking here.
According to Open Europe, the EU spends €54 billion a year on various types of farm subsidies (compared to €42 billion in 2001). An audit showed that 32 percent of transactions involving EU rural development funds were affected by error.
According to an OECD estimate for 2006, the “real” cost of the CAP is €125 billion a year, paid through higher prices and added taxes. The report also estimated that food in the EU is on average 20 percent above the world price, due to EU subsidies and tariffs.
