Tuesday, September 25, 2018

EU: European parliament states that members’ €4,416-a-month expenses must remain secret in which to protect their privacy

(Strasbourg)  You may have noticed that currently there is a huge bunfight across Europe regards the UK leaving the European Union. The British voted leave due to the belief that the EU is undemocratic, that it wastes money and that it has no clear direction in anything it does. The pro European crowd state otherwise and are currently demanding that the largest attended vote in British history which they lost should be retaken as they claim people didn't know what they were voting for, plus the fact that the racist old people who voted to leave are dying off and so the will of the voting public has changed. Which is strange as poll after poll still shows the British want to leave.


The EU haven't helped by dragging things out in which to ensure that other countries don't follow the UK and also in allowing the remain in Europe crowd to capitalise on their stall tactics in which to have another vote in which to keep the UK inside the European union. So the question has to be asked exactly why do the political elites inside Europe want the UK to remain. You see the EU is a club and everybody chips in, to fund the dream of a better Europe. The problem is the Western European countries chip in much more than the poorer Eastern and Southern ones, whilst that is ok when you have equal numbers, the EU like a ponzi scheme keeps on growing and accepting poorer nations. That growth of the EU is displayed below:


From 1981 onwards the vast number of new member's have been recipients and not contributors of the EU kitty. Currently there are a number of applicants waiting to join, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia Macedonia and possibly Turkey which has been trying to join for a few years now. All these countries will require huge amounts of investment, money which will have to come from the richer Western countries. and that is where one of the problem lies. Financial accountability. Before Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Greece joined they were meant to sort out their act, get rid of corruption and basically balance their books, they were given a set time to do so and they didn't. This has resulted in the likes of Romania and Bulgaria being allowed to join the EU whilst failing to meet the criteria set for them. We saw what happened with Greece when they were allowed to join without meeting those same standards, which allowed them to bankrupt the country by allowing their citizens to retire on full pensions from the age of 45 onwards and yet in order to fund this pozi scheme the EU has to continue to milk its richer members dry.

Any attempt of financial accountability at the EU is shunned, which kind of explains why their accounts have never really been balanced. Oh the mandarins in their ivory towers say they have in which to silence their detractors but the fact remains they still haven't managed to balance their books



Which brings me to the latest example of how the EU goes well out of its way in which to refuse to allow the people who fund it, see how they are spending their money. The EU parliament is made up of second rate politicians who having failed to make the grade in their own countries settle for second best at Strasbourg. They are paid a starting wage of €8,611.31 (£7,705) a month in gross salary, plus pension. On leaving they receive a transition allowance worth up to €206,664, depending on their length of service. Those payments are there for all to see. However it has come out in the wash that MEPs have been supplementing their wages with a €4,416 monthly “general expenditure allowance” awarded to MEPs to fund their constituency offices, which costs the public purse €40m a year. MEPs are also refunded first-class travel expenses and get a €313 daily allowance for hotel and living costs when working in Brussels and Strasbourg. Most MEPs claim the maximum office allowance, with only a handful reimbursing the parliament for unspent funds. There is no requirement to provide invoices, receipts or any details on how the funds are spent. Since 2009 MEPs have been obliged to provide receipts for travel expenses, but the €313 tax-free “subsistence” allowance is paid in full, without questions or documents.

A group of journalists who investigate MEPs expense accounts found 249 “ghost offices”, where MEPs had no office, or who refused to divulge the address. In fact out of 748 MEPs only 133 have revealed what they pay in office fees.This led for a call for tighter rules to be put in place in which to stop any abuse of the system. In July the MEPs themselves voted to reject this request. the journalists appealed and took them to court. Today the EU court rejected those calls for greater transparency regards MEPs’ expenses, as it upheld a decision that politicians are not required to reveal how they spend public money intended for their offices citing that an obligation to publish spending records would undermine MEPs’ privacy.

In otherwords the ponzi scheme continues to milk the plebs dry.