EU Megalomania

The oligarchs of the Soviet-EUnion, the unelected commission and its secretive tentacle organisations, demand a budget increase of 4.9% for next year.

Initially one is tempted to laugh off the Africanesque megalomania and the lack of common sense in the style of the late Emperor Bokassa of Congo. It is for the muted nods from countries like Germany, Austria and the Balkan beneficiaries from the splashing of European taxpayers' money that this latest round of irrational and unjustifiable increases of slosh funds, agricultural mismanagment and cohesion funds' subsidies need to be stopped early in their tracks.

To that end I presented on Monday a paper to argue for the "right" size of EU budget increases, and balanced the economic realities, political environment and limited scope of accountability for the way funds are distributed within the EU. At a time when the net donor member states are forced to introduce austerity budgets with a net decline of public expenditures, the same must be expected from the EU's budget of some £117 billion. Taking into account inflation, I advocated an increase of 0.3% for 2012 and 0.5% for 2013 (against the EU's expectation of 4.9 and 5.5 per cent increases).

I'm happy to see that today George Osborne adopted a similar stance: "the EU is in dire need of a reality check before tableing out such ludicrous demands. From the UK the EU can expect a categorical NO to such lavish spending proposals."