I don’t think this film is particularly intelligent, but when I heard it was getting censored from peoples’ sites, from Liveleak and Youtube, there could only be one response.

Here it is (the Dutch cut):

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

UPDATE: We now have the text of the resolution, which - as Bruno Waterfield suggested - boils down to a demand that MEPs pay contractors via accountants. This means that because some MEPs simply can’t be trusted to play the game, they need to be overseen by somebody else who can be. I imagine the theory is that accountants are closer within reach of the law and professional transparency standards and can be collared more easily if things look wrong.

The other thing is that MEPs would no longer be allowed to employ people in their families, something which will piss off the Brits.

These demands simply highlight the extraordinary situation MEPs enjoy. Those in the private sector would be amazed if they knew what goes on.

=== Original post:

I’m playing catch-up here, as I missed Bruno Waterfield’s Telegraph report of an oral resolution Parliament’s budgetary control committee passed on Wednesday night. 

In essence:

“Euro-MPS are to be banned from employing their relatives or paying family-owned companies staff allowances in a reform of their £125 million annual expenses.”

The comments to Bruno’s piece evidence a certain scepticism.

I’m trying to get hold of a copy of the resolution.

Daniel Hannan says MEPs can no longer milk the EU dry.

“I’ve watched it happen: someone is elected on a more-or-less Eurosceptic platform but, as his lips clamp around the allowances teat, he finds all sorts of arguments for closer integration. Aware that his own house is made of flimsy crystal, the last thing he’ll do is lob stones at the fraud-ridden EU budget. Clever, no?”

Indeed. I would only point out that MEPs weren’t actually millking the EU dry, since there’s always plenty of money to go round as long as you’re creative enough.

And whether the practices will stop or simply evolve is another question. I don’t see the proposed changes to accounting requirements necessarily cleaning up Parliament.

Although they want to keep information about their own expenses a secret, the Commission and Parliament have demanded that each member state create a website giving a detailed breakdown of farm subsidies, including names and addresses.

“All recipients of European Union agricultural and rural development payments will be published in detail under new rules adopted today by the European Commission. By 30 April, 2009, the full name, municipality and, where available, postal code of every recipient will be published in a clear, harmonised manner on nationally-managed websites with a search tool which enables the public to see how much money each person or company received. Amounts will be broken down in direct payments to farmers and other support measures.”

We welcome this attempt to introduce transparency into farm subsidies. But we can’t help noticing the hypocrisy of our employees (the Commission and Parliament) requiring transparency when they refuse to apply the same principles to themselves.

UPDATE: Probably worth noting that half the member states already publish this information.

Alter-EU has published a rather useful report about the “expert groups” who advise the European Commission on policy and law.

It reveals a growing problem: These groups are increasing in number (there are now about 1200), but their membership is often kept a secret and their discussions are equally confidential.

The result is that in many cases EU policy is strongly influenced by committees dominated by interest groups.

The groups are committees composed of national representatives, academics, trade associations and business people as well as Commission officials and MEPs.

Alter-EU chose a sample of groups to investigate, and requested information from the Commission. In 34% of cases, the Commission simply didn’t reply to the request. In others, they took up to 80 days to provide details. In half of the cases where the Commission did provide information, it was only partial.

Many groups are controlled by producers - in other words, the expertise they provide is likely to recommend law and policy favouring industry.

The report is well worth a read if you want to begin to understand the opaque way in which the EU goes about creating its laws. It’s available here.

This will probably only interest EU wonks, but it’s actually quite an important step forward.

The working groups that advise the Commission and Parliament on drafting EU law have been anonymous until now. They’re usually industry experts, business executives and “cvil society actors”, but it’s impossible to know who they are and what and when they’re meeting or giving advice. This is an incredibly bad situation, as it allows law to be captured by special interests.

The situation is highly untransparent, and offers great scope for corruption. So knowing who the groups are will give us some purchase in terms of understanding who’s influencing the EU.

“The names of thousands of industry executives advising the European Commission on key policies will be published within months, the Brussels executive has pledged.

The business people, along with academics, government officials and non-government organisations, form “expert groups”. They sit in ad hoc committees of advisers that have mushroomed in recent years as the Commission has moved into complex areas such as climate change and biotechnology.”

But this is only a start. We’ll need to know when they meet, what they talk about, and wherever possible see minutes of meetings.

The EU Commissioner for Justice, Franco Frattini, is to take some time off to campaign in the Italian elections.

And yet EU law says Commissioners aren’t to engage in any other occupation whether paid or unpaid.

“European Commission vice-president Franco Frattini, one of the most high-profile of the commission’s 27-member team, has decided to return to the realm of national politics and stand in Italy’s general election in order to boost chances of centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi.

Mr Frattini, in charge of justice and home affairs, will take four weeks of unpaid leave from 14 March to 15 April.”

But Article 213 of the Treaty Establishing the European Union says:

The Members of the Commission may not, during their term of office, engage in any other occupation, whether gainful or not

Hmm…

The EU Parliament would like you to think that Brussels works a bit like Westminster, with MEPs vigorously debating proposals they’ve come up with before sending them off to be signed by the Queen.

Nothing could be further from the truth. EU Law is developed in a murky, untransparent way, and involves a great many committees composed of members keen to defend their own interests.

So this article by Simon Clark is particularly interesting, because it lifts the lid on how a measure gets discussed in its very early stages.

I sensed, as soon as I entered the room and introduced myself (“Hello, I’m Simon Clark – from the smokers’ lobby group Forest”), that there could be trouble. The guy from Pfizer (yes, the pharmaceutical company) didn’t look pleased, and there were mutterings from some of the other delegates. (There were around 20 in all.)

No surprise then, when, as soon as the meeting began, and we had all formally identified ourselves, two or three hands shot up. As I suspected, some of my fellow delegates were none too happy that a representative of Forest was in the room. If I didn’t leave, said one, she would. Others nodded their heads in agreement.

The rest is here.

Hat-tip Biased BBC.

EU Corruption is pausing for the holiday break, and will be back on Tuesday 25 March.

We plan to spend Easter meditating upon our sins, and we would urge anybody with a guilty conscience in the EU to do the same.

See you soon!

A brief unscientific survey of dot-eu domain names suggests that 80% are crappy redirects, fake websites, or just don’t exist even though they’ve been registered. 

But the whole aim of the .eu domain system was to “accelerate electronic commerce”, promote internet use, and raise the profile of the single market. It was to be “a key building block for electronic commerce in Europe” and “help combat the risk of digital divide”. This was all actually set out in an EU law available as a PDF here.

Instead, we appear to have hundreds of thousands Potemkin domain names. The market regards it as a pointless exercise, and the system has been hijacked by speculators. Eurid is a non-profit foundation established to control the system, and it now has three offices, but it is simply administrating a useless resource conjured out of thin air. It takes payment for each of these domain names, but they might as well be selling plots of land on Mars.

I was surprised and suspicious to read on Eurid’s website that 81% of names lead to functioning websites or e-mail addresses.

But the explanation is obvious. The vast majority of names have been registered by speculators hoping to sell them on for a profit. They then upload standard pages offering sponsored search, or simply offer to sell the domain to anybody interested.

I wanted to work out the true figures, and see how many people use the dot-eu suffix for the lofty purposes described in the EU’s law. Without access to Eurid’s database, it was impossible to get a truly random sample of names to test.

Instead, I tested four samples of ten names each. The results were interesting:

10 random words taken from a magazine article (for example “developers.eu”). Only one successfully resolved. The other nine were fake search sites, registered but no website, or just for sale. Bottom line: 90% useless.

The 10 most popular French surnames according to Wikipedia. Not a single one was used for a website. 1 (martin.eu) was owned by a manufacturing business called Martin, but there was no website. The remainder were fake or non-existent. Bottom line: 90% useless.

The first 10 names of German regions. This should have been more successful, as I think geographical names get some protection. It was indeed more successful, but the results were still pretty dismal. Five resolved to relevant sites. Three redirected to .de sites (what!? have they no faith in the .eu?). Two were fake. Bottom line: 50% useless.

The first ten domain names under a random Google search within the Italian country-level domain (I searched for robotica Bologna in .it sites, took the first ten and converted the names to .eu - a highly nerdish approach, I know). Some of these were registered OK, but in the end only two resolved to a relevant website. Bottom line: 80% useless.

From this survey, it looks like only 20% of all .eu domain names are being used according to the ideals of the EU law when it was passed back in 2002. The rest are useless.

Meanwhile an arbitration court in the Czech Republic has been set up to hear the idiot owners of domain names squabble over who has rights to them. For €3,339 you can ask a three-member panel to reject your claim in favour of some poxy reseller who’s obviously bought your name to make some money out of it.

For example, see this dispute about who should own pool.eu - a swimming pool manufacturer, or a domain speculator? Obviously, the domain speculator!

What a swindle!

See below for details of the four samples if you’re really interested…
Read the rest of this entry »