£100bn extra? That's not a budget rise says deluded Brussels
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-Brussels.html
£100bn extra? That's not a budget rise, says deluded Brussels
- 'They're living in fantasyland,' says Tory MP
- EU demand is actually 10% increase in spending between 2014 and 2020
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mail
Brussels bosses were accused of living in ‘fantasyland’ last night after the European Commission claimed its demand for £100billion of extra cash was not a budget increase. Viviane Reding, the vice president of the Commission, said it was ‘a miracle’ that the EU had not demanded even more money. The budget, which will land Britain with a £10billion bill, is a calculated snub to David Cameron, who has insisted it should rise by no more than inflation at a time of austerity at home.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mail
In a sign of how detached EU officials have become from public opinion, Mrs Reding claimed the budget was not rising – when Brussels was actually demanding a 10 per cent increase in spending between 2014 and 2020 compared with the current budget period. She said: ‘It is a myth to say the budget goes up. We are not asking for more money. We have a steady budget that is not increasing. That is really a miracle.' Mrs Reding, from Luxembourg, also claimed the budget for bureaucrats ‘is even going dramatically down’ – a bare-faced lie exposed by the small print of the budget, which shows spending on administration rising from 5.7 per cent of the total to 6.1 per cent.
In what could become a watershed moment for Britain’s relations with Brussels, Commission boss Jose Manuel Barroso declared the UK and other large EU states should funnel cash to poorer countries in Eastern Europe. ‘It would be a complete mistake, just because of the current moment of very serious fiscal constraint, to make it impossible for the EU to invest in the future,’ he said. ‘Our offer is reasonable, realistic, credible.’
Treasury sources accused the Commission of fiddling the figures, pushing £50billion worth of spending off the main balance sheet and failing to compare like statistics with like. Even after inflation is factored in, the total amount spent on the EU will go from £114billion a year to an average of £127billion over the seven-year period – with British taxpayers expected to find around £10billion extra, or £1.4billion a year. To make matters worse the Commission wants to chisel away at Britain’s £3.5billion a year rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher.
Taxpayers in this country are paying billions of pounds every year towards the bloated bureaucracy that runs the European Union. Here are some of the ways they spend our cash:
- Forty per cent of European Commission staff earn more than £70,000. Just one per cent do so in the British civil service.
- For every pound paid to the EU, 37p will go on the Common Agricultural Policy, which pays subsidies to landowners who are not even farmers.
- Beneficiaries have included golf courses, a Swedish cannabis farmer and the King of Sweden. Spending on administration in Brussels will rise from 5.7 per cent to 6.1 per cent of the total budget.
- Costs are being cut by 33 per cent in Whitehall.
- Having two homes for the European Parliament – in Brussels and in Strasbourg – costs more than £160million a year extra.
- MEPs cost £450,000 a year in salary, allowances, staff and office costs – more than double MPs in Westminster
- The entertainment budget of the European Parliament rose 85 per cent over the last year.
I did warn before the election through numerous examples how much of a problem the EU was even without the recent troubles, but many of you on here (along with the two major parties) thought that a meaningless debate over £6bn in National Insurance was much more important during election time. Now with £15bn+ odd tied up in bailouts we will never get back (thanks Mr Darling and Mr Osborne!) the greedy EU is still asking for more as it always does. As usual with the EU, it appears to suffer from a syndrome which causes politicians to repeat the same line 'the EU is failing, therefore we need more EU!'. But all of this isn't all, the EU has not had its accounts audited for the last 16 years in a row - any private business which operated in this manner, well the owners would be in prison for fraud.
Why we can't be out of the belly of the monster is beyond me, its just getting worse and worse each year. You may not like all of this and what the Commission says, but what can you do? the European Commission isn't elected and cannot be removed like any national government can be.
What will Mr Cameron do? what will Mr Miliband do? what does Mr Clegg think we should do? will any of them do anything? what do you think we should do? thoughts!
