Here’s an interesting piece from the Daily Telegraph on the salary arrangements of the EU bureaucrats. Not bad a deal, to put it mildly, for doing nothing that’s of any use to anybody and the fact that these lucky folk are subject only to a flat tax (of 16%!) is food for thought in the context of an organization that spends so much time criticizing the supposed inequities of the US. Most interesting, however, is what the author (a member of the EU’s ‘parliament’) has to say about the arrangements in that august body:
“Eurocrats have tenure, and know how to use it. Three quarters of the MEPs in the current parliament are new. Yet when we met for the first time last month, we found dozens of pieces of legislation waiting for us. These Bills have been drawn up by the parliament’s secretariat, which will now steer them through with only minimal interference from Euro-MPs, who are struggling to find their way around, and who are in any case more interested in their electoral fortunes at home than in the detailed proposals before them.It is often remarked that the EU is undemocratic, in that it is run by commissioners whom no one has elected. What is less widely appreciated is that even within the parliament, notionally the accountable bit, most decisions are taken by a permanent bureaucracy which regards the MEPs as an ephemeral nuisance… For 300 years, Europeans fought to establish the principle that law-makers should be accountable to the people. Now, without a whimper, they are throwing it away.”
Watching the EU is like watching the slow motion unfolding of a hideous catastrophe. So sad.