The EU gravy train
Wednesday, November 10 2010
MEP Mike Nattrass has called for the EU gravy train to be derailed following embarrassing revelations that the European Union wrongly spent billions of pounds from its budget last year.
The UKIP West Midlands MEP has this week blasted Brussels after the EU’s auditing body, the European Court of Auditors, rejected the EU’s accounts for the sixteenth year running.
Auditors found the two biggest areas of the EU budget, agriculture and regional spending, remain “materially affected by error.”
Worryingly, as reported in the Daily Mail, EU farm subsidises were given to subsidise farm crops without any evidence that they were being grown.
Mike Nattrass MEP said: “When it comes to reducing financial waste our contribution to the EU should be the first cutting priority for our economy, yet we are collecting more tax to feed yet more EU scams.
“This is not value for money and, as the second largest contributor to the EU gravy train we should get a grip on reality, pull the plug and pull out of the European Union.
“Our hard earned money is being needlessly squandered. The European Court of Auditors has found ‘material errors’ in the EU’s colossal £88 billion budget last year. The auditors’ president said £4 billion was in fact spent wrongly.
“Britain should not tolerate this situation any longer. We should pull out of the EU and make our own laws and decisions in Westminster,” he added.
Stephen Booth, analyst with the think tank Open Europe, has also hit out at the EU fiasco.
He said: “This is a hugely embarrassing annual tradition and it remains absolutely unacceptable that the EU budget cannot be signed off by its own auditors.
“The sheer size and complexity of the EU budget means that it remains vulnerable to waste and mismanagement. Until member states and the European Commission resolve the inherent flaws in the EU’s spending there should be no talk whatsoever of budget increases.”