Bill's Comment Page

The EU's latest financial scandal - some comments

The Independent today reports on a developing scandal in the EU in which roughly Euro 920,000 was diverted into a secret slush fund - it seems that the Head of Eurostat (ultimately the Spanish commissioner Pedro Solbes Mira) may be forced to resign. If he declines, it is suggested that Romano Prodi (President of the European Commission) may be forced to sack him to fulfil his pledge on taking office that he would have a 'zero tolerance' policy with regard to corruption, specially after the previous Commission had been forced to resign en masse. The matter has been investigated by Olaf, the EU fraud section, and it appears the report is so sensitive that hardly any information will be released publicly.

Of course, there have been questions raised for months about financial irregularities in the EU, specially after the suspension from duty of a Dutch and a Spanish (?) official for having had the temerity to blow the whistle. I well recall hearing the Welsh windbag Neil Kinnock (Deputy President of the European Commission) during a BBC Radio 4 interview trying to convince listeners that there was nothing to be concerned about and stone-walling the interviewer by declining to talk about the substance of the allegations raised.

EUObserver reports on another scandal involving the European Commission’s technology directorate and the group’s health unit, C4, involving the skimming of millions of Euros by means of fraudulent contracts with Greek companies. The Olaf report to Kinnock seemingly states that the scale of this malfeasance makes the Eurostat scandal seem "almost insignificant" by comparison.

This is just the latest scandal affecting the EU's finances - which of course we all pay for.

Shocking as all this is (and it certainly is), Glenn Reynolds over at InstaPundit naturally puts his own 'slant' on this story when he says:

As reported in InstaPundit "When you consider all the attention that Enron got in Europe, it's interesting that scandals like this one don't get much attention in the United States" (referring to the Eurostat affair) and "Maybe this sort of thing just isn’t news because it’s so common?" (referring to the Technology Directorate scandal)

Who knows why the US media don't cover EU scandals very fully? Although Glenn doesn't spell it out, I get the feeling he is implying that a liberal East-coast media is far too tolerant of the faults of the evil EU. Frankly, if this is what he is implying, I doubt it very much.

No, I think the reason that the ENRON scandal was covered VERY fully in Europe, and in the US and everywhere else in the world, is the vast scale of the ENRON collapse - we're talking $60 billion or so here, after all!! I expect the US media judges that, whilst the EU corruption is a worrying scandal it is just in a different league to the effects people in the US and many other parts of the world suffered when ENRON went bankrupt and that is the REAL story. If Glenn Reynolds really does think the way he writes, rather than indulging in cheap point-scoring for an adoring audience, then it shows just how 'sound' is his judgement.