At least they have a House for it

Carl Bildt has warned that,

Europe risks becoming a "museum" and "irrelevant".

Which is rather charming as the Telegraph reports today on the old story of the House of European History, where no doubt the European Union could comfotrably ensconce itself.

I have to say I colour myself surprised that the Telegraph have run this story now, three weeks after the Express with nothing different in the take other than the quoted member is a Belgian colleague of the Tories rather than UKIP, as we picked up the story back in 2009 via Bruno himself.

Worse still is that he allows the European Parliament to get away with a low figure for the annual costs, as since the Express story ran on the 6th March more figures have come to light, as I reported last week,

The £53.2 million start up cost of the museum and £6.3 million in estimated annual costs, not including staffing, have led the parliament's budget committee to complain "there is still no overview of the global cost of the project available".

There is an overview, they have admitted that the costs will be 13.45 Million Euros (about £11.75 million pounds per annum).

European Parliament caught with pants on fire

A couple of weeks ago the Sunday Express ran an article on the House of European History. In it they quoted the UKIP MEP Marta Andreasen

“Before the House of European History even starts operating European taxpayers will have to foot a bill of £51million just for its refurbishment.
I find no justification for such expense even if funded out of savings. History can be found in books and many museums around Europe cover the history of Europe.

“Such an expenditure in times of crisis will be judged as insulting by the citizens of Europe.”

She was the only MEP to vote last week against paying £2,1million to the architects creating a vision for the museum.

Parliamentary documents estimate the costs of buying the Eastman building, where the museum will be based, at £16million.

Renovating the art deco building and buying a collection for the permanent and first temporary exhibitions will cost another £47million.

That brings the total set-up costs for the museum, due to open in 2014, to more than £65million.

Estimated annual running costs are almost £7.7million, including £1million for 18 full time staff, £1.7million on swapping the temporary exhibition and £1.2million on running an internet site and staging events.

The European Parliament got very upset by thjis story, and went to AFP to put their side of the story, it wouldn't cost that much in running costs they said,

Les premières estimations du coût dépassent 70 millions d'euros avec et le coût d'exploitation annuel est estimé à 10 millions d'euros", a-t-elle soutenu.


Les chiffres avancés par Mme Andreasen sont "excessifs", ont expliqué à l'AFP les responsables de l'administration du Parlement.

Le coût total tourne autour de 53 millions d'euros, dont 31 pour la rénovation du bâtiment qui doit abriter ce lieu à Bruxelles. Quant à l'exploitation annuelle, elle devrait coûter entre 6 et 7 millions d'euros, ont-ils indiqué.

Or in other words Marta got her sums wrong, it wouldn't cost 10 million euros a year at all, far less, 6 or 7 tops.

You know what, they were right, Marta did get her estimates wrong, the House of History will not cost 10 million a year to run. No, according to figures just handed over to the Budgetary Control Committee, the annual running costs will be 13,45 million Euros.

The document is titled,

HOUSE OF EUROPEAN HISTORY

WORKING DOCUMENT BY PROJECT TEAM

ADDITIONAL BUDGET INFORMATION

FOLLOWING MEETING COMMITTEE ON BUDGETS - 3 MARCH 2011

 

Bad Marta.
And here is the table showing annual running costs.

Now is anybody going to punish the EP functionary for lying to the press?

Marta calls for action on European Court of Auditors

Marta Andreasen is tonight asking the Commission what it plans to do about the revelations given that the UK government refuses to act.

"The allegations, which come as no surprise to me, pointed essentially to the lack of independence of EU auditors which affects the level of transparency in their reporting of irregularities.

"Furthermore they put into question the basis on which this parliament has been granting discharge for the last fifteen years."

She added, "It is now time for this parliament to demand that the EU budget and accounts are audited by a truly independent body, external to the EU institutions.

"Without this independent audit member states and parliament are in no position to continue discharging the European commission of its financial responsibility."

Andreasen said she will ask Barroso if he will allow an external auditor to review the accounts during a Q&A session in parliament.

Ind Home points out that this might be 'squirming' but sadly that will be should rather than will as the EU is never going to do anything that seriously opens up its procedures.

It is also worth noting that Siim Kallas who was accused by the Dutch auditor of applying unseemly pressure on the ECA is considering legal action for defamation.

Now to me this sounds like bluster,

Siim Kallas says the accusations are completely defamatory. We are seriously considering going to court,“ Kallas's secretary Hanna Hinrikus told uudised.err.ee.

After all, I would guess he has the EU's legal services run their eyes over the allegations. If he had legs to stand on they would have done more than 'seriously consider'.

Maybe another PQ.

Update
Marta poses her question


I note that Barroso describes the European Court of Auditors as the European Union's 'external auditor'. Which is odd given what the ECA says here,

Provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon concerning the European Court of Auditors and its activity
Article 13 of the TEU states explicitly that the Court is one of the Union’s institutions.

National Embassies left with "a lot of consular work" says Ashton

The ongoing drip drip of bad (budgetary) news coming out of the European Diplomatic Corps has forced a petulant reaction from Cathy Ashton's press team.

Complaining about reports about fleets of arnmoured cars will be provided for her Ambassadors around the world.

"They will be allocated on the basis of the security and terrorist threat. In any case, Baroness Ashton believes it is impossible to put a price on safety."

Eh? Impossible to put a price on safety? That Madam is your job. You have a budget and you spend it after weighing up risks.

The only real safety is not to have been born. Every politician with any involvement in any form of public security has to put a price on safety every day of every week.

Providing well over 100 top of the range armoured limosines for EU diplomats is weighing up your own importance as a subject far higher than bugetary discipline. Which given it is not your money you transparently care little about.

It is instructive however to see what you percieve as the relative roles pof EU and national diplomats, To you the EU's role is,

"humanitarian aid, development and trade issues" and to "drive forward EU foreign policy".

The role of National Embassies however should be confined to,

"a lot of consular work"

Lets have a look at what EU Foriegn policy is and what you see as your remit,

Arctic Region
Civilian Crisis Management
Common Foreign & Security Policy (CFSP)
Instrument for Stability (IfS)
Conflict Diamonds (Blood Diamonds - The EU; the Kimberley Process)
Drugs
Eastern Partnership
Environment - Green Diplomacy
EU Election Assistance; Observation
Euro-Mediterranean Partnership
European Neighbourhood Policy
Enlargement
Black Sea Synergy
External Energy Policy
Human rights; Democratisation
Information on grantsAll available translations.
Landmine Actions
Middle East Peace Process
Migration
Northern Dimension
Public Consultations
Uprooted People
EU Centres
Education

So not a lot left for the Nations there is there?

As Marta Andreasen points out,

""The fragrant (sic)waste of taxpayers' money on the EU diplomatic service is appalling. Why should people have to pay such exorbitant amounts of cash to an organisation whose purpose is to supplant member state diplomatic services?


"That the biggest EU diplomatic posting will be to Turkey with 132 staff, all working feverishly for this country's accession, while the vast majority of European peoples oppose Turkish entry, shows that this EU diplomatic service is there to serve the views of the EU political elites and not the people of Europe.

"The sooner we stop footing the bill for this EU carry-on the better.

"The vanity of the EAS knows no limits. They are playing at being James Bond with these armoured limos.

"British embassies are closed and downgraded, and our international voice is being drowned out by career eurocrats in comfort postings. Worse still this is all done with the connivance of the foreign office".

I like the idea of 'fragrant waste' - the sweet smell of excess perchance?

While we are increasing the Budget of the EU, we find the the accounts are still dodgy

As everybodies eyes are turned to the European Council and Mr Cameron's self proclaimed victory, I wondered if anything had been slipped out that I should notice, and lo and behold what have we here?

It is the European Court of Auditors latest report,

Audit of the clearance of accounts procedure

Signed of by the rather inapproriately named Michael Cretin. (see left)

So what do we find? Looking at it all is not well. The report covers the Agricultural budget, which makes up,

some 54 billion euro, representing close to 50% of the EU ’s payments

Quite a lot of cash then, indeed given the fact that they don't seem to know what is where. But it is not all bad news,

The Court found that between 1999 and the end of 2008 the Commission recovered 5.582 Million euro from the Member States through its conformity clearance procedure. However, significant shortcomings still affect the implementation of the conformity clearance procedure and adversely impact on the achievement of its objective to exclude irregular payments.

So that is about 1% of the budget has been clawed back, but those are strong words from an auditor. "Significant shortcomings" which "adversely impact" on its ability to stop fraud and error.

And they repeat this later,

The difficulty with this type of correction is that they do not provide an adequate basis to determine accurately the total amount of irregular payments that are due to weaknesses found in the systems. Thus, the conformity decisions are not related directly to irregular payments made to beneficiaries and do not therefore directly exclude this irregular expenditure from Community financing.

and in conclusion,

In the absence of such a legality and regularity decision, the expenditure for the year in question cannot be considered as being fully cleared at the time of the discharge.
In order to better comply with the overall objective of the procedure and more fully meet the needs and expectations of the various stakeholders, the Court recommends a comprehensive review and subsequent reform of the clearance of accounts procedur

Or in other words the system is riddled with fraud, corruption and error. The processes we use cannot work out one from another,. We have no idea what is happening to the money, so we better tear the system up and start afresh.

Much as Marta Andreasen was suggesting all those years ago before she was sacked by Kinnock for making those suggestions.

So what of the Commission's response to this rather anguished cry of professional pain from the ECA, who are after all the auditors?

The Commission considers the current system to function well and to achieve its overall objectives. It will, however, continue to improve its operations in practice and, where necessary, submit appropriate proposal for furher improvements to the European Parliaent and the Council for the post-2013 period.

Arrogant, complacent and lacksidaisical. The authentic voice of those too important and too blind to care what they do with your money, and too cut off from reality to realise that it really, really matters. So if you want to know what is happening with the money that Mr Caneron is so happily handing over to Brussels. And how it is looked after when it gets there?

Look no further.

"It's all shite" They do it to themselves they do..

Jim Higgins is an MEP from Connaught Ulster and seems to have in a few short words encapsulated the attitude of the governing class to those who have the temerity to question the amount of money shovelled in their direction by the taxpayer.

Marta Andreasen had flagged up the £350,000 cost of a freebie 'study trip' to Madeira. Higgins has responded in the Irish Independent,

"That's all shite ... that's all shite if you don't mind me saying so. That's typical media bluster, you know. I don't share that at all,"

And he claimed the three-day stay in a five-star hotel on the island represented value for money because of the "important work" taking place. "I haven't a clue what star it is. All I know is that it's a very good hotel, the accommodation is wonderful, the food is lovely. For people who work so hard, we're entitled to that. You don't expect us to stay in B&Bs, do you?"

That's the way Jim, just show them your common touch.

£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 planet is the EU on

Marta Andreasen points out that increasing the EU's budget by 6% this year is from "another planet".

It is obscene she says to vote to increase MEPs salaries. Here here. Stick it to them Marta.

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.