On Thursday David Cameron will host “a landmark international anti-corruption summit in London.”
The prime minister has promised that the conference will “agree a package of practical steps” to “expose corruption so there is nowhere to hide, punish the perpetrators and support those affected by corruption drive out the culture of
corruption wherever it exists.”
Noble aims – but the irony of this is spectacular.
For much of the rest of this week Cameron will be busy pleading the case for the European Union – a greater source of corruption than any other organisation on the planet.
The institutional graft has become so familiar we long since ceased to be shocked.
Last November it was announced that the EU’s auditors had – for the 21st year running – refused to approve the Budget.
“Payments for 2014 are materially affected by error. We therefore give an
adverse opinion on their legality and regularity,” auditors said of the £101 billion ($146 billion) budget.
Farm subsidies – the biggest item in the EU’s budget – were riddled with “inaccurate or ineligible claims”.
In Spain “aid was paid for land claimed and recorded as arable land which was in reality a “motocross track”, auditors found, without providing any further
details.
In France, Greece, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic “land claimed and paid for as permanent grassland was in reality fully or partly covered with dense shrubs, bushes, trees and rock”.
Yet often the boondoggles are legal.
The EU’s Overseas Aid Budget is often spent in relatively wealthy countries. There is ample maladministration and fraud as well as vast sums spent – quite legally
– on lavish junketing.
Last year £6.6 million ($9.5 million) was spent by European Commissioners on entertainment, luxury gifts and hotels.
Surely the MEPs themselves maintain rigorous accountability?
The Euro MP Dan Hannan has recounted in his book “Why Vote Leave” how on his first day in Brussels he was told how travel payments were automatically made at a far higher sum than the true cost of the flight and that a “general expenses
grant” of £3,500 ($5,000) a month was also paid – no receipts required.
It’s not just about money. When fixing regulations to squeeze out competitors the corporate lobbyists swarm in like wasps at a picnic.
Cameron is wrong.
The best “practical step” to defeat international corruption can be taken not this Thursday but on Thursday June 23 – by the British people voting for Brexit.
