Corrupt, in that its internal workings are open to its operators who can siphon funds (gathered from taxpayers of member states) for themselves, and nepotistic EU bodies can determine who gets are where financial aid is directed.
But today, the Commission is again faced with scandal and allegations of financial mismanagement and serious fraud, centred on this nondescript office in a bleak, modern suburb of Luxembourg. It's the headquarters of Eurostat, the EU statistics agency. On the face of it, Eurostat is a department as dry and tedious as its name. It publishes economic and financial data and statistics across Europe. But it's very powerful. The figures that it publishes can determine who gets regional aid. And it's now the centre of a fraud enquiry that threatens to negate all those promises of a new clean European Commission. The allegations, which are being investigated by the EU's anti- fraud office OLAF and by authorities in Luxembourg and France, centre on Eurostat's dealings with a series of other companies to whom they subcontracted work. One of them, Planistat, based in France, sold on Eurostat data quite legally. But it's alleged by EU investigators that some 920,000 euros ended up in an account outside EU financial scrutiny. Commissioner Pedro Solbes, the monetary affairs commissioner who is responsible for Eurostat, told a committee of MEPs last week, on the record, that OLAF, the EU anti- fraud agency, had given him this information. Another company, Eurogramme, based in Luxembourg was said to have falsified its financial history to win contracts with Eurostat. Commissioner Solbes told the same committee of MEPs that he had received this from Eurostat itself. This man, who still works at Eurostat, first tipped-off the authorities about the problems there, two years ago. At his request, we have concealed his identity. In an exclusive interview with Newsnight, he told us how money has been wasted.
Backward, in that it uses mountains of regulation and reels of red tape to suppress business and limit freedom in its member states. Take, for example, the man who was locked up for selling fruit in pounds and ounces instead of metric measurements. And then there's the enduring Common Agricultural Policy that distorts the agricultural market and forces farmers out of business, the Euro, a mickey mouse currency that has reduced the value of money workers take home, and that ghastly constitution that is the first step towards a United States of Europe.
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