Otters and Science News: SHOCKING EXPOSE OF HOW EUROPEAN UNION BUREAUCRACY WASTES TAXPAYERS' MONEY - EU countries also generously finance subversion and terror in Israel

By Leo Mckinstry - Daily Mail

EU Rep. Catherine Ashton

The shocking fact is that the EU’s bloated civil service continues to live in a world of extraordinary privilege — and all funded by hard-pressed taxpayers from across the Continent.

Next Thursday, millions of Britons will vote in the European elections to return more than 70 MEPs, yet in doing so they will effectively be endorsing the continuing expansion of the entire European project, mired as it is in greed, corruption and a blinkered sense of the rightness of its very existence.

The sign in the Brussels office foyer perfectly summed up the farce. ‘The European External Action Service will be on strike this Wednesday until 5.30pm, before the summer party. If you are coming from Luxembourg, you can claim a travel allowance.’
(Read about EU countries financing Palestinian terror at the end of this report.)

Those words, posted by a union official during a dispute last June — and referring to a departmental social event — unintentionally encapsulate the grotesque culture of excess and entitlement at the heart of the European Union’s bureaucracy of pampered staff. Even the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, never noted for its concern for splurging other people’s money, has become embarrassed in recent years about this climate of indulgence.

The Brussels strike last summer — by the EU’s foreign diplomatic corps — had, ironically, been triggered by a number of measures by the Commission, albeit limited, to try to tackle the extravagance within its bureaucracy. These proposals included raising the retirement age for new recruits to 66, a year’s freeze in pay and pension contributions, and an increase in official working hours from 37.5 a week to 40.

In the context of austerity that people across the European continent have had to endure since the financial crash, this was a very modest package of reforms. Yet, so ingrained is the greed and self-interest among EU staff that they reacted with outrage. ‘It is the most serious attack we have seen,’ wailed one union.

Even after most of the measures were eventually implemented, the discontent has rumbled on. Indeed, a few weeks ago, Eurocrats were furious about the suggested introduction of an electronic clocking-in system that would check whether they are working their weekly 40 hours. Such a scheme would be unsuitable in ‘a dynamic modern organisation’, claimed one union representative.

With the crisis in Ukraine deepening, the expensive uselessness of the EU becomes ever more evident. In line with its desire to build a federal superstate, Brussels has been desperate to portray itself as a major global player. That is why it has set up its own diplomatic service, headed by Labour peer, Baroness Catherine Ashton, with embassies all over the world.

But now, after Russia’s annexing of Crimea, we can see the folly of this ambition. The EU has pontificated and postured in response to Vladimir Putin, but achieved nothing. AS CITIZENS look at the EU’s limp response to the crisis in Ukraine, they must wonder what on earth all their billions are being spent on.

Much of the long-standing anger about EU waste has, understandably, focused on the dubious practices of Members of the European Parliament and the exorbitant rewards for EU Commissioners such as Baroness Ashton, now on £250,000 a year, despite never having stood for election herself. But if you thought Commissioners and MEPs were on the gravy train, what about the EU’s own work-force? This is an organisation that contains an estimated 3,325 officials — more than 7 per cent of its establishment — whose salaries exceed that of Prime Minister David Cameron.

But the basic pay is just the start. Bureaucrats also enjoy an incredible range of benefits: from expatriation allowances, to support with school fees. What’s more, staff enjoy effective tax rates that are far lower than in any member state, often amounting to no more than 11 per cent in real terms. That makes a mockery of all the EU’s synthetic anger at tax havens such as Monaco, for the EU itself is one of the biggest tax havens in Europe.

As one official put it to me about the culture of low tax and high allowances, ‘This is the only place I have ever worked where my net salary is bigger than my gross one’, thanks to all the perks that go with the job. Completely unaccountable, cocooned by public money from any commercial imperative, the EU has never had to face up to its failures.

This spring, it was revealed that a £20 billion black hole has opened up in the Commission’s accounts because of poor budgetary controls and financial incompetence. This deficit occurred despite a recent injection of £10billion, which was supposedly intended to balance the books. What is so nauseating is that this ill-managed budget, which, in 2013, totalled £123 billion, is entirely met by taxpayers.

The burden is particularly heavy on us in Britain because of the size of our economy. Last year, our government made a gross contribution to Brussels of £17 billion, which amounts to £9.6 billion after the repayments we receive in various forms. It is a net contribution that has more than doubled from £4.6 billion in 2007.

How the EU wastes so much of that money is the inevitable consequence of its refusal to impose effective management, or restrain its prodigality. Those traits are reflected in its bloated, top-heavy structure.

According to its staffing report for February, the EU’s institutions and agencies have 46,625 employees, including 24,901 in the Commission in Brussels, and 6,773 in the European Parliaments of Brussels and Strasbourg. Once a month, the entire European travelling circus decamps from Brussels to that French city for four days of business. For the remaining 300 days of the year, the Strasbourg parliament stands empty.

Even the spendthrift European Parliament has baulked at the annual cost of this monthly move, which is about £163 million, and last year MEPs voted to scrap the Strasbourg parliament. However, the ultimate decision lies with the various national governments of EU member states, and so the charade goes on.

A huge number of the EU’s administrators have salaries far beyond the dreams of most workers in Britain, even those with the best qualifications. What’s more, there are 16 grades in the career ladder of the EU’s hierarchy, ranging from grade one for roles such as a typist or clerk to grade 16 at the top. A senior official at the highest level, with six years’ experience, will receive basic pay of £185,170 a year.

One of the key reasons that the EU is so costly is that its bureaucratic structure is heavily weighted towards those in the higher pay bracket. In the administration of the Commission itself, there are 212 officials on Grade 15 (which equates to a minimum basic pay of £150,700, more than Mr Cameron’s salary of £142,000). In addition, there are another 2,095 Commission administrative officials at Grade 13, for which the minimum basic annual pay is £117,750. It is the same story throughout the organisation.

In Baroness Ashton’s burgeoning and feeble diplomatic empire, much of its £436 million annual expenditure goes on its 1,660 officials, 538 of whom are on basic, minimum salaries of more than £104,000.

The EU’s Social And Economic Committee, meanwhile, has 720 staff, 107 of them being paid more than £100,000. Despite such largesse, one official described the committee to me as ‘more or less pointless’, with staff ‘doing God knows what’. Equally pointless is that improvident talking shop, the European Parliament, which swallows £936 million in personnel costs every year.

It is a telling indicator of the EU’s priorities that 655 staff are employed its Publications Office, which relentlessly churns out its federalist propaganda, but only 310 officials work in the anti- fraud office. But the total rewards are far higher than the basic salaries, for no other employees in Europe are offered such an array of publicly-funded perks.

For a start, all officials are provided with a generous ‘expatriation’ allowance if they are working for the EU outside their native country. Awarded at a flat rate of 16 per cent of salary as a supposed compensation for living abroad, this allowance can be highly lucrative. For an official on the top grade, it is worth £30,000 a year. In 2011, the total bill for this perk came to £200 million.

In addition, officials with families or partners are entitled to a household allowance of £143 per month, plus 2 per cent of salary. Those with children not only receive a further dependents’ allowance but also financial help with education, either through the payment of school fees worth £212 a month, or through attendance at one of the EU’s 15 taxpayer-funded private ‘European’ schools.

Last year, the costs of these schools amounted to £163 million. The employee gravy train keeps rolling, with most staff given travel allowances, including an annual flat-rate payment for themselves and their family to make a return trip to their country of origin.

Equally generous are pensions and working conditions. Although the private sector’s generous and gold-plated final salary schemes have been all but eradicated in Britain, it is a very different story in Brussels, where those who have worked for the EU for at least ten years and are aged over 63 can receive a pension of up to 70 per cent of their last salary payment. Inevitably, the Left-leaning and politically correct EU provides financial allowances for parental leave, too — not, you might notice, merely maternity leave — for up to six months.

In addition, staff can take unpaid leave ‘on personal grounds’. Just as munificent are the holiday arrangements. Staff receive a minimum of 24 days off a year, as well as public holidays. But flexitime means that they can disappear even more regularly. Through canny planning, some employees legitimately manage to be on holiday for a quarter of the year. Weak management also means that absenteeism is rife.

The full impact of the EU’s mixture of special low taxes and lavish perks can seen by the use of Commission’s own internal pay calculator, an online device that shows the difference between basic salary and the final package.

Take the example of an EU administrator from Britain who has been at Grade 12 for six years in Brussels and has three children at school. His basic pay is £9,416 a month but because of his family and foreign status, his take-home pay — even after paying tax — is £10,697 per month. Sadly, this staggering munificence has not been translated into efficiency. Quite the opposite.

Even with all their rewards, officials have abjectly failed to organise the EU’s finances properly, or prevent massive abuses within the organisation. Disgracefully, the EU’s accounts have not been signed off by the Court of Auditors for 18 years because of irregularities. This mismanagement is compounded by how much time officials waste on shuffling useless papers, compiling unread reports, holding unnecessary meetings, and dreaming up new heavy-handed regulations. At times, the bureaucratic blizzard seems overwhelming.

In 2012, a high level meeting was held in Brussels, attended by 76 officials as well as the President of the European Parliament — simply to agree the name for a corridor in one of its buildings. Farcically, the meeting failed to reach a decision.

Just like that risible notice last summer which invited workers to walk out on strike while at the same time reminding them to claim expenses, that pathetic outcome could be taken as a symbol of how — even as the rest of us struggle with the constraints of long-term austerity — we are all being taken for a ride by this useless, grasping bureaucracy. All things considered, when we go to the polls in the European elections on Thursday, it would be no wonder if many of us wished that one of the boxes on the form read: ‘None of the above.’

Report by:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2630988/Planning-vote-weeks-Euro-election-First-read-jaw-dropping-expose-Brussels-elite-gorge-money.html

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