Why does the Commission keep getting it so wrong?

An interesting spat has developed between the EU and the US. The EU is considering blocking foreign bidders from chasing certain public contracts. It criticizes the US saying that only €178 billion of public contracts can be awarded to non-US companies. The US has countered this by stating categorically that the EU Commission figures are wrong, and that the true figure is €302.7 billion.

With the recent revelation that the Commission was €10 billion short last year, and is paying last year's bills from this year's budget, we have to ask "why do they keep getting it so wrong?"

I tabled a formal question to the Commission on this matter this morning.

Speech in Strasbourg, The EU´s Accounts are not signed off... AGAIN!

This is the text of a speech I just gave in the European Parliament concerning the accounts of the EU.

Mr President, what I find deplorable is the smug acquiescence of the EU in its continued failure to manage acceptable accounting procedures.

The people of the UK who are after all the second largest contributors to this project - are sick and tired of the EU and all of the corruption that goes on. Especially as people are witnessing severe cutbacks of public services.

What I find most alarming is the notion by the unelected Commission is the fact that because this happens year after year -17 in fact - that it is in someway acceptable.

It is clear that the EU has shown its inability to guarantee that it has legitimately spent taxpayers money.

This just underlines just how outrageous it is that the European Commission is seeking another increase in it's budget when there are question marks of billions of euros of expenditure

Speech in Strasbourg, Comission Work Programme.

President Barroso will be presenting his proposals for the above programme. This will be the text of my speech.

The Lisbon strategy's aim in 2000 was to make the EU "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion",  As we know it failed.

And now looking at this proposal for a work programme the EU will continue to be a failure

According to Eurostat, industrial output in the EU fell by 19% during the economic crisis. In comparison to 17% in the US,  Downturn in industrial output in the Eurozone has been worse than in the EU 27 as a whole, suggesting that the Euro is a burden to recovery  

Even the EU´s own figures show that more job growth is created outside the eurozone than in.

And yet Unelected President Barroso says that the UK is obliged to join the euro.

No thank you very much - the UK needs to divorce ourselves away from this covern of failure and despair - to instigate a free trade agreement with Europe and the world. Let us be gone and plague you no more

For the sake of my country, be gone with your damaging regulations, be gone with your harmful harmonisation, be gone with your destructive laws, be gone with your affronts our democracy and be gone with your begging bowls

Plague us no more

Questioning the President of the European Commission.

One of the advantages I have as a non-attached member of the European Parliament - I am not a member of any political group - is that I have more opportunities to speak on important issues. Within the political groups it tends to be only the Presidents of the groups who get important speaking time.

On Tuesday I was able to question Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission. I asked him who it might be possible to have common EU policies when time and time again we see an inability to reach concensus on importnat issues such as foreign relations and security and defence. I suggested that it would not be possible to implement common policy with some loss of democracy for thye EU member states.

The President's reply was evasive to say the least. I think I hit a raw nerve.

I was also able to ask a supplementary question concerning pan-European political parties. He confirmed to me that these parties are an integral part of EU integration, and the development of the EU as a state in its own right.

We must be aware of this, and not be seduced - as some clearly are - by the promise of extra cash if our own politicians allow themselves to be subsumed into these wretched pan-European political parties.

Hypocrisy from an EU Commissioner; Why aren’t we surprised?

EU's Mr Lightbulb does bit to save energy by leaving on the lamps outside his luxury home day and night for weeks on end
By George Arbuthnott and Will Stewart
Last updated at 1:23 AM on 13th March 2011

He is the man behind the European Union’s ban on the traditional lightbulb that has caused anger and confusion in the UK’s shops and households.

But it appears that for Latvian Andris Piebalgs energy saving doesn’t start at home.
For Mr Piebalgs, the former European Commissioner for Energy, has left the outside lights burning day and night on his £1.25 million luxury home despite neighbours claiming he has not been seen there for weeks.
The lights are on but no body is home: Neighbours say no one has been living at Mr Piebalg's 1.25million home near Riga for several weeks



Now former communist Mr Piebalgs has been accused of double standards. In 2005 he told this newspaper in an interview that ‘we can all do our bit’ to save electricity.
Nikki Sinclaire, the Independent MEP for the West Midlands, said: ‘This is a classic example of hypocrisy. Here you have someone championing environment law and then disregarding it himself.’
Watt a waster: Lights blaze away outside the home of Mr Piebalgs who is understood to have been several thousand miles away

Bulb: Mr Piebalgs modern lightbulb shines brightly

Mr Piebalgs, 53, earned £1.4 million in salary and perks as the EU Energy Commissioner during his six-year tenure in the job which ended last year as he became EU Development Commissioner.
A Mail on Sunday survey has revealed UK shoppers are bewildered by the vast array of replacement low-energy bulbs of different shapes and sizes, power and prices as a result of Mr Piebalgs’s diktat.
The problems for consumers include many of the low-energy alternatives being far too large to fit into a traditional reading lamp.
And toxic mercury contained in the most common version means councils will not pick them up from the doorstep because of their concerns over the health risk to binmen.
Mr Piebalgs’s modern home is a short distance from the capital Riga in a pleasant village which was a former Soviet summer playground and is now the preserve of Latvia’s wealthy set.
Two hours before dusk yesterday, six lamps were alight on the external walls of the property.
One neighbour said: ‘The half- dozen or so external lights are on day and night.’

Another said: ‘There hasn’t been anyone living there for several weeks.’
According to Mr Piebalgs’s official diary, he has spent the past two weeks 7,000 miles away from his home approving future EU development programmes in the Pacific Islands of New Caledonia, Vanuatu and East Timor.

Light fantastic: Mr Piebalgs campaigned for a ban on traditional lightbulbs that caused anger and confusion in the UK

He was scheduled to return from the trip last Friday. On his official European Commission CV Mr Piebalgs does not mention his Communist Party membership.
At the time he may well have seen it as advantageous to advance his career as a head teacher and education administrator when Latvia was under the Soviet yoke.
Accounts vary over how long he belonged to a party now seen as the main vehicle of oppression of the Baltic country, but one local source said it was ‘at least six years’ in the Eighties.
But his Red past did not stop his career flourishing in the post-Soviet era when he went from being education and finance minister to an eventual senior post in the Riga Foreign Ministry.

He then took a job as a senior bureaucrat in Brussels before becoming Energy Commissioner in 2004 after his tiny state joined the EU.

He was not Latvia’s first choice and his emergence was greeted by some with disapproval.
Even Latvians are angered by his ban on the traditional bulbs, which will not be on sale from next year.
The manager of one electrical shop said the old-fashioned 60W bulb had sold out in Latvia because of frustrations with the new bulbs.
The supply and importation of pearl bulbs used in the UK was banned two years ago.
A spokesman for Mr Piebalgs declined to comment.
However, it is understood the lights are a security measure


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365740/Mr-Lightbulb-does-bit-save-energy--leaving-lamps-outside-luxury-home-day-night-weeks-end.html#ixzz1GV943tS4