14 million Euros to spend a few pennies

That fount of all rectitude, that home of the parsimonius, the Eurpopean Parliament has agreed to spend another 16 million euros on improving office space in the Strasbourg building.

The extra space would allow the building of new offices for MEPs' assistants, many of whom currently share office space with MEPs when they are in Strasbourg, and provision of new communal toilets.

No seriously, we cannot have MEP's assisatnts sharig the same office as their boss, that just wouldn't do. According to the European Voice it appears the money will also be used to knock down some of the intergral MEP loo spaces and build communal loos.

This will be good in that paradise of Presidents I suppose to discover who indeed is the biggest swinging Dick in town. But do we really need to spend another great wad of cash, on loos?

Gad its tough working in the European Parliament

Really it is, much worse than working elsewhere, I wonder why we do it.

What? You don't believe me. Well the staff Committee of the European Parliament has produced a survey of staff attitudes, and I can tell you all is not well in the Towers of Babel. Called the Well-Being at Work survey it makes salutary reading for those who do not have to suffer the indignity of being a Eurocrat.

The survey questionnaire was sent via email to 7900 colleagues: 4722 permanent staff members, 1639 temporary and contract agents, 1539 parliamentary assistants.

And there was an impressive 19,93% response rate. But we work hard, Oh so hard,

Overtime
The survey revealed that recourse to overtime is a quite everyday practice in order to meet work commitments. Over the last 12 months, with various frequency, 68,83% of concerned colleagues worked during free time in order to meet work demands; 37,61% more than 10 hours a day, 43,64% outside the standard work timetable (evening, week-end).

I mean trying to fit all that governance of Europe stuff into the statuary 37.5 hrs a week is tough. And almost 40% had, at least once, worked a 10 hour day. Call a freaking ambulance.

Around 50% of respondents consider always or often their work to be stressful (48,75%); to feel exhausted after work (53,05%) and too tired (53,17%). This has inevitably an impact on private life, 42,2% find that the job always or often prevents them from giving time to partner or family.

It is one of those permanent annoyances of life that having a job means that you cannot be with your family. Deal with it.

Now look at this bit. It appears that not only is working for the European Parliament stressful, bad for your family and might make you miss lunch once in a while, we are also the victims of an extraodinary amount of workplace grimness,

Concerning harassment, revealing results can be identified by comparing the data obtained regarding the EP Secretariat and those given by Eurofound for 27 EU Member States in its Fifth European Working Conditions Survey. 15,64% of respondents in the EP had experienced verbal abuse at work against 10,8% reported by the Eurofound as average level in 27 Members States; 16,18% of colleagues who replied considered themselves to be a victim of threats and humiliating behaviour against 5.0% in EU27; 16,72% of the EP respondents declared having experienced psychological harassment against an average of 4,1% in the EU27.

If you work in the European Parliament you are subject to more abuse, harrasment and threats than elsewhere. I tell you it is awful, here we are trying to create a Europe of peace, harmony and compulsory kittens and this is how we treat each other. It's a disgrace that these things can happen.

So why are we so selfless? Why do we suffer al these dreadful slings and arrows. Well maybe it is to do with this, the month pay table (In Euros),

Not forgetting these extras

Family allowances, which, depending on your family situation, consist of:

the household allowance (2% of salary + EUR 170.52);
the dependent child allowance (EUR 372.61);
the pre-school allowance (EUR 91.02);
reimbursement of educational expenses up to a limit of EUR 252.81, double in certain cases.

Other allowances
The expatriation allowance (16%) or foreign residence allowance (4%); these percentages apply to the basic salary;
The secretarial allowance: awarded on a personal basis to beneficiaries before 1 May 2004 (C4/C5: EUR 131.84 – C3/C1: EUR 202.14).
Protection of secretarial work in case of promotion to grade AST 7: compensatory allowance(link externaltype doc)

So now you know. You mustn't mock I think we deserve sympathy and care. (Oh and those nice EU plates on our VAT free cars).

Oh My Freaking Cripes. Sometimes I hang my head in horror

What is this?

No wiser, how about this?


No really, we need Europe to stop us singing all alone, with the wrong words and out of tune.

Somebody wake me up when the adults have come back. How much is this extravaganza costing us?

You can even vote for your favourite Kareoke track.

Guys, Guys, there is a financial crisis that is swamping your precious political experiment and you want us to vote on our favourite Kareoke tracks?

For Pete's sake, get serious.

Eurocrats subsidised morality

Just a few days ago I was sounding off about the attempt by Barroso to portray EU civil servants as the victims of monstrous attacks in the press,

"The European civil service is often attacked for its apparent 'privileges' when this is not the case and I am always defending this."

Saying he "cannot accept populism against the European civil service" he paid tribute to EU civil servants, describing them as a "great asset to Europe"

So imagine my surprise when I looked at the internal newsletter of the parliament to discover this,

The European Parliament is dedicated to reducing its carbon footprint and is seeking, as part of its Mobility Plan, to encourage its staff to use public transport.
In the case of European Parliament staff members based in Brussels, this measure will be carried out by means of a ‘third-party payment system’ contract signed by Parliament and the Société des Transports Intercommunaux de Bruxelles (STIB), under which Parliament will contribute 50% of the cost of individual season tickets taken out by its staff members.

I checked on STIB that will be 203 GBP per head. Now with an estimate of 5000 staff based in Brussels, that is at or near a million quid.

And why is that the Parliament is spending your money this way? Because it wants to feel morally superior to those that pay it.

Put it this way, when I worked in Brussels, I walked, or took public transport. And you know what I paid for it out of my wages. Weird that, just like the poor benighted Belgian taxpayer.

How dare the EU institutions lecture me about "No Car Day" or boast about turning their lights out at 6 pm on a Friday when everybody has left for their (heavily subsidised) trips home.

Who the hell do they think they are, taking taxpayers money, and coming all holier than thou? Mr Barroso, do you think that this public subsidy of European civil servants counts as privilege? If not what would you call it?

You could get a few rounds in with this

Just been wiffling through the General Budget of the European Union, as you do on a Saturday morning, and this little item in the Parliament budget caught my eye.

Article 3 0 4 — Miscellaneous expenditure on meetings 

Item 3 0 4 0 — Miscellaneous expenditure on internal meetings 

You know, the loose change, indeed this budget line is 

intended to cover the costs of the beverages, refreshments and occasional light meals served at meetings held by the institution, together with the management costs for these services.

Appropriations 2010 : 3 050 000

Now admittedly this drops in 2011 to 2.5 million, but both are a huge leap up from the 2.1 of 2009. The thing is, if an MEP hosts a reception they have to pay for the drinks themselves. So this is only the official Parliamentary events. The coffee handed round during Committee meetings, the individual bottles of water, that sort of stuff. Surely the MEPs and staff could get their own coffee? Surely they can use tap water like normal people (and it would help their precious carbon footprint too).

An EU Crystal Ball

A little birdy has told me what is coming up in the European parliament for your delectation. The following Committees have just had the follwing reports sanctioned. Now tell me where lies the European Union's ambition?

- Foreign Affairs:
"EU as a global actor"
- Development:
"Future EU budget support to developing countries"
- International trade:
"EU-China unbalanced trade?"
- Econ:
"Credit rating agencies: future perspectives",
"Corporate governance in financial institutions"
- ITRE:
"European broadband: investing in digitally driven growth"
- REGI:
"Absorption of structural and cohesion funds: lessons learnt fro the future EU policy"
- CULT:
"European cinema in digital era",
"Youth on the move: framework for improving Europe's education and training systems"
- LIBE:
"EU internal security strategy",
"Organised crime in EU",
"harmonisation of criminal law in the EU",
"EU counter terrorism policy..."

Will people just wake up and see the scale of their desire to control our lives?

Evidence of Smoky lederhosen at the European Parliament.

They attempt to cover up parlous viewing figures on their €40 million website

Back in September President Barosso made his infamous "State of the (EU) nation" speech to the European Parliament. You remember the one where MEPs were threatened with fines if they didn't appear. Well having poked fun at the pomposity of it and particularly in the light of the US President's State of the Nation address, getting live viewing figures of 48 million Nigel Farage made a request of the Secretary General of the European Parliament,

Dear Sir

Some correspondents in the UK tell me that, despite the millions being spent on the EP-website, they were unable to obtain simultaneous translation of the speeches, this morning.

I should also like to know the "hit-rate" for the live Barroso-speech, if you have any indication available.

Yours faithfully

Nigel Farage

All very cordial like. The response from Klaus Welle, the German (CDU) Secretary General of the Parliament, was written on the 14th Oct and received on the 18th - On the cusp of the strict 6 weeks limit, (as an aside, no other group leader would receive such tardy service - it itself a calculated insult from a massively paid civil servant to a democratically elected member, if Daul, Schulz or perish the thought even Cohen-Bendit had written the answer would be by return - but I shall let that pass).

The response was interesting. It accepted that there are technical issues with the website (which given the spend should have been ironed out by now) but when it came to hits Welle said,

"Regarding the number of hits, we do not have exact figures because of the variety of access to live streaming of the plenary... but the technicians have told us that the intensity of the traffic was overall more than double the average traffic during ordinary plenary sessions".

A statement that might be described as economical with the actualitie, given what we read here,

This is an interview with George Kasimatis, who runs Europarl TV and is responsible for the website that hosts the live stream, it was published today in New Europe.

Would it be possible to get a specific number for just the website?

We have the analysis of the website, but we do not make them publically available for the time being.That seems to me to be pretty conclusive. They have the figures, they just don't want to give them out. The reason why is simple, fear of being laughed at.

What´s the reason we can´t get these figures?
What would happen is that journalists could take that figure and say “no, that´s the viewers of EuroparlTV”. The website represents the minority of viewership for EuroparlTV.The purpose of EuroparlTV is not to have its own website but to have its content viewed by the citizens. What we count is where we are present, and where we are viewed. The goal - our philosophy if you want, is the distribution. The impact is not the views of the website, is the total views of the content produced by EuroparlTV

But you see we are talking about people watching the speech live, not those watching the thing on news bulletins. We know that 48 million watch the US president's State of the Union live, we have no idea how many watch clips on news bulletins, so the fact that the footage is then reused is of not relevance to the question.

Another interesting aspect of the interview is the sheer cost of the website,

There was the budget of €40 million for four years. You are just on the
beginning of the third year. Has the budget been adapted to the crisis?
The new version of EuroparlTV website we have just launched cost €250 000. In 2009 the budget was €9 million. We didn’t spend the whole budget. This 9 million is split between the two companies. One company, TwoFour, has the technical support
which is about €1.5 million, there is €500,000 for promotion, and €7 million goes to production through Mostra. What is interesting that €2 million of this €7 million, goes to translation of the content into 22 languages. For the next year we are going to spend much less than €9 million because we can do a lot of things internally; we have developed our studios, we have developed our equipment. We are expecting to economize because we are using our equipment, our infrastructure so the total budget will go down. We expect to spend €5 million on content instead of €7 million. We may not translate all the content into 22 languages.We are also going into more and more co-production. We have already organized three debates with Euronews – one in June with the President of the Parliament and leaders of the political groups, one was in September on the Roma issue and we have just done one on October 12.

And for these huge sums it must be inconceivable, as Mr Welle suggests, that they don't have the figures. So it appears that Mr Welle's pants are on fire and he has told an untruth to a Member of the Parliament. Now, what does the rulebook have to say about that?

Maybe Article 12 about bringing the institution into disrepute (Oh I remember that) but he might be able to claim justification via, Article 17

An official shall refrain from any unauthorised disclosure of information received in the line of duty, unless that information has already been made public or is accessible to the public.

Which seems to give him permission to refuse to answer. But surely this doesn't allow him to give an untruth?

Would that we had an FOI act in the European Institutions.

Stuff you pay for

The Parliament is currently passing the Budget of the European Union and one budget line in the Parliament section caught my eye, (page 22, of this document line 1632)

Social contacts between members of staff and other social measures

And what is this budget line for? A budget line which amounts to 310,000 Euros? It is an

"appropriation 'to encourage and provide financial backing for schemes to promote social contact between staff of different nationalities, ... subsidies to staff clubs, sports associations, cultural societies ...'"

Fortunately somebody on the Budget Committee spotted it and put in an amendment to cancel it saying,

Is Parliament a playground or a place of work?

Of course given that that somebody was a chap called Lucas Hartong and he is a Dutch MEP from Gert Wilders' PVV his amendment was rejected. The net result is that you are paying 310,000 Euros for EP staff members to indeed have a rather wonderful, multi-linguistic and social time of it.

Money well spent you must agree.

Update,
Just had an email from Mr Hartong,

Every day that I am voting I think: I´m in the twilight zone..... Only supported by 2 or 3 colleagues who haven´t given up the fight either.

£5 million for a few pens!!!

Marta Andreasen has today revealed that the European Parliament has just contracted a firm to the tune of £5 million to produce what are amusingly described as 'communication objects'.

As she points out, "It appears that the word austerity doesn't translate into any of the EU's 25 official languages".

She is now going to see if there are any links between the hlders of the contract a local Belgian fim by the name of International Graphic Editions & Promotions and the Parliamentary authorities. Not they have of course, but you know, weirder confluicts of interest have arisen before.

What is it with EU construction?

Yet again, another EU building has a case of the wobbles, this time the vastly expensive Committee of the Regions headquarters building, the Jacques Delors.

Part of a false ceiling in the Jacques Delors building in Brussels - shared by the European Union's Committee of the Regions and the Economic and Social Committee - fell down over the weekend, according to a statement issued by the two institutions.
Parts of a false ceiling in an atrium on the fifth floor of the building on Rue Belliard collapsed during the night between Saturday and Sunday (7-8 August). No-one was hurt.

This follows the farce of the Strasbourg collapse. Are the Gremlins trying to tell us something?

All hail Jon Worth: worster of Simocracy

And his ongoing campaign against European Parliamentary 'tinterweb excess.

And the latest cyber boondoggle in his sights is Citizalia. And boy oh boy it does seem worthy of his contempt. (See virtual MEP - Green perhaps - on the right) For the paltry sum of about 1 million Euros (out of a budget of about 4 million - see below for update) the firm, European Service Network has been commissioned to create a virtual Parliament. (page 21. and I note that Mostra behind the infamous and useless MyParl website is involved in the largesse)

It is an exercise in Sim-democracy (simocracy?) He reckons it looks alright (I think it looks about 10 years out of date). According to its PR puff,

Citzalia is democracy in action. It is role playing game and social networking
forum wrapped in a virtual 3D world that captures the essence of the European
Parliament. You may even recognise parts of the building.

I can see the huge crowds of 'der kidz' getting excited about it now. Clamoring to be part of the project

Citzalia is a world you inhabit and help create. Using your avatar you can walk around, interact, network, debate the issues of today, propose legislation, vote and learn about how the European Parliament works for citizens. You can be a
Member of the European Parliament (MEP), a journalist, a student or any role you
want to create.

Any role I want to create - Guy Fawkes perhaps? Can I set fire to it? Or maybe be a belligerent member of a French trade union and throw week old virtual offal at the walls? Or a Euro Banksy?

Others will be able to vote on the quality of your proposals and you will be able to vote on theirs. By earning experience points you will be able move up to new expert levels in Citzalia.

The question remains. Do points win prizes? Once I have mastered the trialogue and comitology, do I get a virtual audience with a virtual Buzek? Can I slide a digital stiletto between the ribs of a saturnine pixilated Kalus Welle?

Current Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and European officials will be on hand to guide you through the procedures and provide background information.

Not that they have any real work to do. maybe this is a good idea after all, it would keep them out of trouble and stop them legislating and regulating for a short while... who knows. There again if EP officials are to be spending time on this, who is paying them to give one to one tutorials to bored students in Vilnius, how many staff will be online 24/7? And how much will that cost?

Via Jon

A certain Paolo at ESN has told us that the website's, "total funding for the project is about 275,000 euros". Which is odd as the Parliament's tender document says that the maximum allowed is 250,000. So he must be including the co funding from ESN itself.

Even the Belgians don't rate the European Parliament

According to the Belgian newspaper De Tijd,

Belgium today takes over the rotating EU Presidency for six-months, with outgoing PM Yves Leterme running day-to-day affairs and the EU Presidency while talks on forming a new coalition continue. In an interview with De Tijd, Jean De Ruyt, the head of the Belgian Permanent Representation to the EU says: "The biggest stumbling blocks for the Belgian presidency are with the European Parliament, an incalculable and badly organised partner. You don't know whether the opinion of the MEPs is being decided by the content of a matter or by the wish to be visible and show its own power. In some matters they don't even know that themselves."

Sounds as if Mr de Ruyt knows the place.

EU Eco power, Measure by Measure

They used to say that Britannia Rules the Waves but the New York Yaught Club Waves the Rules, and it has been known since way back when that control of the system of measurement equates in part to control full stop. Not for nothing was Clause 35 of the Magna Carta thus,

(35) There shall be standard measures of wine, ale, and corn (the London quarter), throughout the kingdom. There shall also be a standard width of dyed cloth, russet, and haberject, namely two ells within the selvedges. Weights are to be standardised similarly.

So we should watch those who would measure us, and how they would measure us.

And you will not be surprised to discover a great panoply of measurement and standardisation going on under the auspices of the EU. Last week there was a great public hearing in Brussels European Parliament, chaired by the Tory MEP, Malcolm Harbour. It was set up to greet this report,

REPORT OF THE EXPERT PANEL FOR THE REVIEW
OF THE EUROPEAN STANDARDIZATION SYSTEM
Standardization for a competitive and innovative Europe:
a vision for 2020

Why must we have harmonisation? Here's why

2.1.3 Environmental drivers
· Climate change is the biggest challenge facing the world. There is a need for standards to tackle climate change and related challenges - such as energy and water efficiency - in support of the EU energy and climate change package (20/20/20 goals) and to promote its practice worldwide. This will include the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, establish credit trading systems and, more generally, provide the metrics (measurement standards) for setting, claiming and verifying environmental achievements;
· Need to facilitate behavioural changes towards more sustainable decisions of all economic players and individual consumers.

The point being is that if they design the standards, they can therefore design it to fit the results that they desire, rather than the reality of the world that is found. Standards will fit the evidence to promote particular policy prescriptions. Note that rather scary comment, 'There is a need for standards to tackle climate change'.

And why is that?

'To facilitate behavioural changes'.

Now as scientists surely there should be a need for standards to reflect the world as she is, to facilitate in the understand of said extant world?

Err chaps, you don't think you might be overstating your brief just a little bit?

If this isn't an EU Propaganda unit in the making please tell what it is

Tomorrow the European Parliament's Culture committee will be voting on a report by a certain Morten Løkkegaard, a new Danish MEP and former journalist with a string of questionable activities to his name, including 9/11 conspiracy stuff.

He was elected last year with the express purpose of convincing voters that "the EU is exciting and delicious" and that the EU must "be something hyped - to something more fat." He was he says, looking for a way to ensure that the EU was better promoted,
"It has surprised me hurt that the EU project, which I think is brilliant, have been sold so poorly. We must have done something about," .
He also said that he "had not yet found columbus egg to have made the EU popular." (Got to love machine translation).

Well it seems that he has found his columbus egg after all, and here it is,

It is his draft report

"on journalism and new media – creating a public sphere in Europe"

Amongst the other ways of bigging up the EU comes this corker,

Invites the Member States to consider including the EU as a subject in all secondary education curricula and encourages them to exchange best practice in this area at EU level;

Which just has to be fraught with difficulties. This one which could have hilarious results,

Asks the Commission to introduce annual scoreboards that list and compare EU
news broadcasting by public service networks in the Member States;

And this one which is frankly scary,

Suggests setting up a taskforce of independent journalists who are free of editorial control, hired from outside the EU institutions and based in Brussels, with the task of producing daily EU news coverage to be published on different platforms and channels in accordance with journalistic news criteria; suggests appointing an independent chief editor for this taskforce;

Yeah, of course, right, this would be entirely independent. He is proposing, and the Committee will no doubt support the creation of a EU news agency - over and above its massive current media spend to fill the airwaves with EU propaganda. And don't pretend that it would be independent.

Does anybody truly believe that if the EU was paying the wages that a journalist would be able to do an investigation into EU corruption, expenses scandals and so on?

Of course not.

Now I know that this is an own initiative report, and therefore has no legislative power, but it was from things like this that idiotic ideas (and expensive ideas) such as Europarl TV and the infamous failed MEP Facebook MyParl.eu were created.

The Committee must vote this down.

Update
New Europe picks up my post (pg 22 of the Pdf)

It used to be the Gnomes of Zurich - now it is the Aliens of the City

There are times when I forget quite what level of fruitbattery exists in that small Brabantine city of Brussels, then for a moment I take a look at what they get up to on a day to day basis, and there they are again. Barking as ever.

Out of the crisis: a "real" economy and world governance system

As opposed to a "fake" economy, like taking up the Euro when you have cooked the books.

So what is this real economy about, can it be about buying and selling, harnassing the profit motive to everybodies improvement? Nah don't be daft,

The EU is the world's largest economy, with enough international clout to return to "real capitalism" rather than resign itself to an alien "financial capitalism", concluded MEPs and experts at a public hearing held on Thursday by Parliament's special committee on the crisis.

So what about the Euro then?

EU model and crisis-tested Euro

The EU approach, founded on the real economy and opposed to financial capitalism, could constitute an effective response to the crisis, but unfortunately the crisis struck at a time when the EU is in "an incomplete stage of its construction", according to Mr Padoa-Schioppa.

Yes that'll be the chap who is described correctly as the founding father of the Euro.

But hark what is this?

The EU, as the world's leading real economy, is also able to tax financial transactions unilaterally, failing an agreement with its partners, said Stephane Schulmeister in a reply to Charles Goerens, Pervenche Berès (S&D, FR) and Pascal Canfin (Greens/EFA, FR). It is Europe's financial centres, London and Frankfurt, which would be most affected by these measures, as the volume of transactions they handle could be reduced by 30% to 80%, according to a WIFO study, but "the production volume of the EU as a whole is sufficient for tax revenue to remain large enough" to cope with the new market situation.

Yes these nutters are prepared to see the City of London crash and burn, and yet think that it won't matter because the schlerotic European industrial base will save us all. By some bizzare reasoning they think that the EU floats on a bubble of its own beliefs, untouched by the financial realities beyond its own porous borders.

If you filmed it and watched it, it would feel like you were filming in an asylum, where every now and then somebody would declare themselves,
"I'm John Milton Keynes"
and be wrestled to the floor whilst protesting that all they wanted to do as to found the Arts Council.

How Euroscepticism can kill millions

No really it can. That is if you take the latest propaganda wheeze from the European Parliament office in London, launching tomorrow at the BETT trade fair it Olympia, at face value. Called 'Crisis Point' it is an interactive whole school program by which a children are encouraged to pretend to be EU Commissioners or MEPs for a day. This way they learn vital citizenship lessons.

The day starts with a news report. Xtreme Drug Resistant TB has claimed a life in England, and Europe goes into scare meltdown.

We must have new legislation to stop this horrid disease today...

Of course this just exemplifies the way in which the EU now propagandises itself. As we know from their own 'Communication Strategy' a key target demographic is kiddiewinks,

"It has to be seen as complementary to the already existing or proposed initiatives and programmes such as those in the field of education, youth, culture and promoting active European citizenship".

First they see a target audience, then they commission somebody to produce something that targets that audience. In this case to the tune of 70,000 Euros through a subsidiary of Bell Pottinger/Chime. Then launch.

If you go to the website there are all the things that you as a teacher need to have a fun day promoting the efficacy of EU action in public health. Oh yes it claims to be 'impartial', well given the strictures of the Education Act it could hardly do otherwise now could it? After all the Act states,

"407. - (1) The local education authority, governing body and head teacher shall take such steps as are reasonably practicable to secure that where political issues are brought to the attention of pupils while they are- (a) in attendance at a maintained school, or (b) taking part in extra-curricular activities which are provided or organised for registered pupils at the school by or on behalf of the school, they are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views."

But if you play with the rather spiffing flash program available to download from the site, then what do we find. If you put in that you want to retain national control over policies the outcomes include tens of millions of deaths, and a 60% likelihood of civil unrest. Now if you take a communitarian approach you can bring down the deaths to the low teens (best I have managed) and have no civil unrest.

Genius.

Now apart from the basic propaganda aspect of this is the point that this sort of exercise ties into another major issue facing us, an issue that is dealt with today in the Daily Mail by Chris Booker, and is a reprise of his excellent book (with Richard North) 'Scared to death'.

Those that purport to govern us are past masters in the use of the 'Doctrine of Beneficial Crisis'. Pick up an incident, exaggerate the situation, position government action as our saviour and produce centralising legislation, giving themselves more power. Of course this is all done at breakneck speed with the concomitant that it is done badly and ends up costing a packet of our money.

Result, more central power, and massively increased costs.

More genius.

The bill for the EU will rise to £50 million a day

Here is Marta Andresen pointing out in pretty simple language what is going on with the EU budget this year.

What is astonishing in this time of economic difficulties is that the Council of Ministers asked for a 3% rise. The European Commission asked for a 4% rise, but the European Parliament, that circus of rectitude, has asked for and voted for a 10% rise. Which as Marta points out would push the daily cost of the EU up to a staggering £50 million a day.

The author of the report, one László Surján, a so called centre right politician from Hungary overules our doubts.

"He said the €120.5 billion suggested by council was not sufficient and that the figure put forward by parliament offers a "global solution" to all member states to cope with the downturn.

He said, "The budget for 2010 needs to be the answer to solving the economic crisis and to re-launching the European economy. Therefore, more money is needed, while respecting the principal of value for money."

Dare I said he would wouldn't he. After all his country Hungary are net recipients from the EU budget, recieving according to the European Commission figures for 2007, a mere 1.6 billion euros. What it is getting now with the downturn is anybodies guess

I am, yet again reminded of that great old saw of Milton Friedman's,

There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get.

Sort of sums up the Parliament's position.

Bright beautiful new morning

So my comments yesterday about the troubles in the new Tory ECR Group were nothing on what really happened. All yesterday evening I was trying to get a steer on what was happening within their group following Edward MacMillan-Scot's auto-defenestration, and there were reams of silence. Unanswered texts, phones pointedly unpicked up, mubles and delays.

What was going on?

Well in brief this...

EMS's vainglorious independent candidacy for European Parliament Vice-Presidency was sucesful. This unpicked the deal which had been the foundation of the new Group, that is the Poles of the PiS get the VP job and the Tories get the leadership of the Group. EMS did this despite threats (now carried out) that he would lose the Tory whip.

This enraged the Poles, despite desperate attempts by Tory staffers who were spinning that EMS's candidacy was all about the Germans getting pissed of with Sylvana Koch-Mehlin's . The photogenic Sylvana is getting too much publicity they say, she is unimportant (being from the small free-trading, atlanticist Free Democrat Party) whilst far more important and visuallly chalenged German MEP's do not attract the press attention.

Anyhow this obviously didn't wash with the Poles who then had the temerity to gather together and nominate Mick Kaminski (the failed VP candidate) to stand against Timothy Kirkhope as Group leader.

Kaminski, a long time friend of the Tory Eurosceptics in Brussels collected the support of at least ten of the Tories and thus defeated Tory wet Kirkhope.

One grinning all over his face turned to me this morning and said,

"At least we have a Conservative as Group leader".

That is all very well, and I like Mick, but it means that the Tories having set up their group now have failed to pick up either of the posts that gives them acess to the Parliament's top table of the Bureau.

Mark Francois , (the shadow Europe Minister) may well have phoned Mick to offer his congratulations but the Tory high comand must be livid. Their plans have gone spectacularly awry. And it is only day one of the new Group.

Worse still, from what I hear, MacMillan-Scott is boasting that he is going to cause even more trouble by revealing more revalations about the PiS (homophobic stuff maybe).

How we all laughed last night as Robert Sturdy arrived to enjoy Bastille day drinks and pulled his finger across his throat with a grimace.

The picture illustrates Nigel Farage and Jan Zahradhil (ODS). Zarahdil is sitting in the seat that Mr Kirkhope thought had his name on it at the front of the chamber.

Lies, dammit lies, well maybe not

The European parliament has got itself into a tizzy about a story that made it into the News of the World last Sunday.

Somehow Parliament Bureau documents from June had made into the hands of the Screws and they documented quite how much money the new President of Parliament was to receive,

"THE next European Parliament president is set to get an EXTRA £113,016 to rent a home PLUS £43,704 for entertaining on TOP of the current £36,778-a-year living allowance."

So we made it clear that we didn't like it,

The leaked document, uncovered by the UK Independence Party, says the changes will put the president in the same pay bracket as the head of the European Commission, who is in charge of the EU's day-to-day running.

UKIP MEP Marta Andreasen said: "The political elite think these obscene sums should be thrown at their feet without any thought of the people that pay for their feather-bedded lifestyle - the taxpayers."

The response though seem a little confused, I will add it in full,

Parliamentary bosses have angrily hit out at a UK tabloid's claims that the next president is in line for a "massive" pay increase.

According to the News of the World newspaper, the president is set to gain an extra €130,000 per year to rent a home plus €49,000 for entertaining on top of the current €41,000 living allowance.

The planned €180,000 pay rise is detailed, said the paper, in "secret EU documents" and is designed to give the president "more dignity."

The pay rise, it says, would make his total yearly income about €247,000 and put the president in the same pay bracket as the president of the commission.

Former Polish PM Jerzy Buzek is next week expected to be approved as parliament's next president, taking over from German deputy Hans-Gert Pöttering.

However, a parliament spokeswoman said there was "no truth whatsoever" in the story.

She told this website, "We do not know where they have got these figures from and it is incorrect to say the president is in line for a 'massive' pay rise. The allegations are utterly unfounded.

"There was, some time back, a possible proposal tabled which may have led to changes in the president's financial arrangements but this is not going ahead now."

She added, "It is possible legal action could have been taken in relation to this story but we have looked at this in the past and I am afraid it is not a viable option."

Well the figures (10,990 euros pcm for housing and 4,250 pcm for entertainments) came from the Bureau "summary of decisions" document, item 6, dated June 2009, which are not yet available in the intranet of the Parliament. So yes she does know where they came from.

"Some time back", suggests years, not less than a month. I had breakfast "some time back", but I would be dissembling if I said that to a journalist.

"no truth whatsoever" she says, " The allegations are utterly unfounded" she says.

Liar I say.

If she is telling the truth why does she then admit that "There was... a possible proposal tabled which may have led to changes in the president's financial arrangements but this is not going ahead now", what since the publication of the article?

Shall we see how the final published minutes are massaged shall we, wonder if the recordings of the meeting have been changed too?

And if legal action was looked into - get real - why was it decided against, because the story was true?

It's shooting fish in a barrel.


Update
I have just received an anonymous note corerdcting this piece.

"The paragraphe in the Bureau document presented the currant situation which has been the the case since 1991. The president gets every three months (trimenstrel) the per diem for every calander day, an allowance for housing and an allowance for entertainment. The 2009 figures are 298 euros for the per diem, 10,990 euros for housing and 4,250 euros for entertainments. Total = 90 days x 298 + 10990 + 4250 = 42000 euros. Or about 170,000 euros a year. So Poettering got about 400,000 during his two and a halve years as President.

the porte parole of the parliament is technically correct to say that it is untrue that increases are planned for the President. The new president will simply get what every president has got in the past. The Bureau document was about extending parts (but not all) of the president's package to vice-presidents and group presidents. This was rejected by the Bureau".

So I apologise for my inaccuracy, and I suppose we must be grateful for small mercies that they didn't extend the package. Astonishing that they considered it. But this confirms the great wodges of wonga dissapearing into the president's maw.

At last, break out the champagne

The European Parliament is 51 years old. We are now in the thirtieth year since direct elections were introduced and what do I find. That I have been entered for an internal course by some kind soul. Not sure what he means by it, but it is nice to know that finally the Parliament is addressing the problem,

ETHICS IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

Objectives : By the end of the course, participants will be able to better understand the notion of ethics within the institution before applying it in their functions

Content :
- Why Ethics,
- Brief history,
-
Sound administration and maladministration,
- Deepening the ethical culture at the European Parliament.
.

Duration: 0.5 day

Places : BRUSSELS and LUXEMBOURG