Tuesday, October 26, 2010

There is austerity, and then there is austerity

Austerity begins at home, as well we know. But obviously not of you are one the the EU's new diplomats.

Here is the tender offer for furniture for our new diplomatic corps, the EEAS. Not you will be interested to note for the Embassies themselves. Oh no, not that, but more for the residences of our pampered plenipotentiaries,
Purchase of top-of-the-range furniture for the residences of ambassadors-heads of delegation of the European Union
The bill is estimated at 8,000,000 Euros.

Now there are 130 current EU delegations/embassies around trhe world, which would mean that this largesse could be split at just over 61,000 Euros per country. But, but. Many of these countries, indeed all of them are already in offices, and already have furniture - indeed a frienmd went out to one a year or so ago.
And surely they weill be spending more on the prestige places such as Washington with Barosso's chum the reprehensible Joao Vale De Almedia, rather than the more, shall we say hardship posts like Cape Verde, where Josep Coll I Carbo holds the fort. Still, a lot of cash per residence I would say.

Also interesting is that this website is an official Belarusian Government website, encouraging Belarusian's to compete for the contract.

The EU's version is here

2 comments:

Col Blimp said...

"And surely they weill be spending more on the prestige places"

One assumes you meant to write "Palaces?"

Now in the good old days, when there was any problems in the world, we didn't need 130 embassies (well, OK, if you were a smoker you did) and certainly not Euro ones; in fact a simple battleship did the trick!

Another good reason to leave the EU now (treaty lock or whatever fantasy lib.con.co.uk say).

Anonymous said...

We are much further along the road to integration with the EU in terms of legal commitments and obligations than most people realize.
Probably will end up in tears, has in the past.

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