As France’s underclass riots, the EU’s governing class steals. Writing in Die Welt Daniel Hannan, one of the very few MEPs to bring any credit on Europe’s rotten and corrupt ‘parliament’ explains:

“The EU has just adopted its budget for 2006. As usual, much of the money in it will be lost or stolen. For ten years in a row, the European Court of Auditors has refused to endorse the accounts and, barring a miracle, this year will be no different. We are so accustomed to this state of affairs that it no longer makes the headlines. But just imagine if a private company were to behave this way. Imagine if, when presented with a firm’s accounts, the auditors announced that as much as 91 per cent of its expenditure might be going astray. The directors of such a company would be in prison. “

In the piece, Hannan goes on to look at the way that the EU organizes its spending in ways so perverse that they might (might) even bring a faint tinge of embarassment to the snout of a certain bridge-building Congressman from Alaska:

“Look at where the money goes. 42 per cent of the budget will go on the Common Agricultural Policy… For all the talk about Europe becoming a hi-tech economy, we are still fire-hosing money at a system of farm support that drives up prices, penalises the poorest consumers, degrades the environment, hinders trade liberalisation and impoverishes the developing world. The next biggest tranche, 37 per cent goes on social and structural funds, the main beneficiaries of which are EU contractors and their friends. Then come the political grants, aimed at buying the loyalty of client groups: the European Women’s Lobby, the European Trade Union Confederation, the Union of European Journalists and so on. And, in bizarre act of necrophilia, we have just agreed to spend some €9 million on promoting the European constitution. Is the EU proposing any savings to counterbalance these increases? Yes: it intends to cut the budget of OLAF, the anti-fraud office.”

Hannan concludes with a modest proposal – that poor Angela Merkel, whose efforts to form a coalition in Germany are running into the sand, should simply withhold Germany’s contribution until this mess is cleaned up.

If only.