Strasbourg: "The perception of transparency"
Kicking and screaming, our European representatives are being dragged towards the light, fingernails scraping the expensive parquet floors as they go: The European ombudsman is one step closer to gaining full access to information and documents held by EU institutions after MEPs adopted on Tuesday (22 April) a report boosting his powers.
"The community institutions and bodies shall be obliged to supply the ombudsman with any information he has requested of them and give him access to the files concerned," reads the European Parliament's report, supported by an overwhelming majority of the lawmakers.
I love the fact that giving him the mere minimum tools he needs to do his job is seen as "boosting his powers". What does he do at the moment? Ask people if they are crooks over a glass of Merlot?
"The changes will help me to improve the service that I can provide for citizens, thus strengthening their trust in the European Union and its institutions," the European Ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros, said in response to Tuesday's vote.
Nikiforos? They put a Greek in charge of complaints? Ahahahahahahaha!
Perhaps you have to have tried complaining to a Greek shopkeeper or taverna owner to appreciate the mordant irony in this. Ten buys you one Nick the Greek spends his days in a string vest with his feet up on his desk, worrying at his teeth with a toothpick or maybe flicking pistachio shells in the general direction of a bin. "You got a complaint, φίλέ? File it over there, with the fucking nuts. Yeah, we'll get right on it."
The parliament's two major groups, the conservatives (EPP-ED) and the Socialists (PSE), showed little enthusiasm for a review of the ombudsman's duties in order to allow him access to all documents, including those classified.
Of course they didn't. Why would they? The waters that divide socialists and conservatives are not as deep as they used to be, particularly when they're forded with piles of European taxpayers' cash. The working class can kiss their arse; they've got the foreman's job at last.
In a separate budget vote on Tuesday, MEPs did little to improve the perception of transparency in the EU assembly, by rejecting proposals for auditors' reports to be made public as a matter of principle.
Perish the thought!
In addition, MEPs also rejected calls to reveal the names of the 407 members of the voluntary pension fund.
The Parliament pays €27,720 each year into the pension fund of the members concerned, while they are supposed to make a private contribution of a further €13,860 each year. However, it is believed that a number of MEPs pay their personal contributions from money allocated for their parliamentary duties or for running their office.
There's a word for this, too; theft. You pay your pension contributions out of office expenses? Yeah, you're a thief. Voleur. Ladrón. Κλέφτης. (I would translate it into a few more of the 23 official languages of the EU, but unlike them I don't have a translation budget of nearly £700 million per year.)
Why do we tolerate these people? Why is our response apathy and cynicism, when it should be unbridled rage? Several of our European neighbours have a fine tradition of mob justice; why are these well-fed political aristocrats not dragged into the streets of Strasbourg (on the rare occasions when they are actually there) and rent limb from limb in a frenzy of righteous fury?
I appreciate, sad though it is, that my dream of mass executions is unlikely to be realised any time soon, so here's a more modest proposal; every British MEP should immediately declare whether they are members of the Parliament's voluntary pension fund, and provide documentary evidence to demonstrate from where their contributions are taken. This is f*cking theft, pure and simple. You wouldn't accept it in a cleaner; why do we accept it in those employed by us to make laws on our behalf?
http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/
Kicking and screaming, our European representatives are being dragged towards the light, fingernails scraping the expensive parquet floors as they go: