Jon Worth is surveying and linking to reactions to Ireland’s No-vote, better than I’m able to. Go here.

Lisbombed. 5 reasons why the Irish voted no, apparently. The No side got a head-start, the No side had a simple message, the No side were populist, people were afraid, people were confused. None of these look at the text of the treaty itself, and none of them suggest that people made a rational decision. Well… emotion comes into any voting decision, I’m sure. But it strikes me that dismissing the voters in this way is precisely the problem. It’s contemptuous. If the europhiles could get that lesson under their belt, they would do much better.

Another take: Top 6 reasons why Lisbon was voted down. Number 1 is the Treaty itself - Ireland would lose a Commissioner, the Treaty was too long (300 pages or so), and the possibility of EU interference in Ireland’s tax arrangements remained despite assurances.

The Spectator says man of iron Gordon Brown is to press ahead with ratification of Lisbon regardless of its rejection in Ireland. No surprises there: when it comes to courage, Gordon wrote the book. (There is no evidence to suggest he contributed to this one though).

73Man has a checklist of Lisbon responses: Michael Martin eating his words [ ], Paddy Power spinning his losses [ ], Dick Roche being undemocratic [ ], Patricia McKenna getting all too excited for television [ ], etc. Ouch.

Yes is currently on 46.4%, No is getting 53.6%.

RTE’s referendum blog reports Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore is claiming Lisbon is dead, but there can be no two-speed Europe. Never say never, at least in politics.

Now there’s a surprise. Socialist MEP Mia De Vits has complained to the Commission about corporation tax levels in Switzerland.

Is the Commission aware of the fact that, through their embassies on European territory, the Swiss authorities are actively trying to attract firms to Switzerland by offering them tax incentives? What view does it take of these practices?

It should take the view that corporation taxes are too high in the EU, and member states should be encouraged to reduce them, but it won’t. She continues

By implementing the rules governing State aid laid down in the EC Treaty, the European Commission has sought to compel the Member States to abandon damaging tax competition. The Member States have indeed discontinued such practices to a large extent, but they are now powerless in the face of the policy employed by the Swiss authorities. Should the Commission not now also be seeking to halt the damaging tax competition which that policy is bringing about? Is the Commission prepared to raise the Chiquita case in negotiations with the Swiss authorities?

I would hope it would ignore your socialist whining for higher tax. Tax competition is beneficial, not damaging. Elsewhere, De Wits has called it “state aid”, as if nature imposes taxes and any derogation is in fact the state acting to change the natural order of things.

Unsurprisingly, a glance at Ms De Wits’s CV shows she has never had a proper job. No wonder she’s detached from reality. After doing a mickey-mouse degree in Social Sciences, during which I’d speculate she was inculcated with hatred for the market, she became a journalist and then a policy adviser and general drain on other peoples’ money with a trade union. With an employment history consisting entirely of parasitical and unproductive juggling with abstract ideas, it’s only natural she has funny ideas about money.

On the topic of tax competition, the Swiss Finance Minister said recently:

“Tax competition provides opportunities which should be used. Above all I see three advantages:  

First, tax competition offers citizens protection from the excessive tax appetite of governments. Tax competition is a significant guarantor of a favourable tax climate. That is to say, it is a regulative that disciplines state decision-makers and forces them to treat the financial means entrusted to them in a disciplined, careful, and economical manner.

Second, tax competition is then the discovery procedure for the exploration of new and innovative policy designs. Successful strategies are imitated and adapted. Their creators are invited to international events. Unsuccessful strategies, by contrast, are avoided. Tax competition thereby helps those taxation systems gain acceptance which tax payers feel are fair and reasonable. Several times already Swiss cantons have in this way contributed to the further development of our tax system.

Third, tax competition, however, also serves as a welcome standard of comparison. Citizens can measure the success of a government relative to the success of other governments and take this into consideration in elections. In this way, tax competition makes democracies livelier.
For Switzerland, tax competition is not only a theoretical concept. It represents one of the constitutive elements of our system of state and our self-understanding. Our experiences with tax competition are positive. Nonetheless, with us as well, it will not work without harmonization. However, we clearly differentiate between formal harmonization among cantons, which we strive for, and material harmonization, which we reject. Financial equalization forms the corrective between the objective differences of the cantons. Why should this not also apply to international tax competition? Following the well-known Frank Sinatra song, I believe that “if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere”. Our double taxation agreements, the EU taxation of savings income or the cohesion payments are all an expression of these convictions.” 

Very nicely put.

David Charter, the Times’ European correspondent describes the surreal nature of MEPs’ expenses. It’s a perfectly decent piece, but not greatly different from any other description of the scams in the European Parliament that have been published for years.

[T]the parliamentary authorities do not expect to see much of a breakdown of what happens to the annual parliamentary assistants’ allowance of €186,000 (£148,600) and the other expenses schemes, which can be paid into these service companies. One MEP described his bemusement when he was handed back an accounts form by a Parliament official who told him that he had put down too much information about what he did with the money.

Another opportunity is presented to unscrupulous MEPs through the mechanism used to pay their generous second pension. The money for this is switched to their pension account from another pot, their general office expenditure allowance of about £50,000 a year, which they are supposed to refund from their own bank account. There is no systematic check on whether MEPs rigorously reimburse the general office expenditure allowance, and several years ago they voted down an amendment to bring in a specific check on whether this money was being repaid.

The rest is here.

Conservative MEP Giles Chichester, chairman of the Conservatives in Brussels, is now simply Conservative MEP Giles Chichester. Presumably he will soon simply be MEP Giles Chichester, as party leader David Cameron cuts him off from the party.

In other words, the BBC is reporting that he’s resigned. That was quick.

Members of the European Parliament, I hope you’re watching the political news from Britain.

A minor taxpayers’ revolt is going on. Transparency is on the agenda, and expense accounts are being opened up to public scrutiny.

These (admittedly small) changes are both setting new standards in Europe, and letting the UK catch up with the transparency standards our continental friends already enjoy, particularly in the Nordic countries.

Littlejohn in the Daily Mail:

According to parliamentary expenses smuggled out under the radar last Friday, Tony Blair remortgaged his constituency home in Geordieland for £300,000  -  twice what it was worth. He then claimed back the interest payments from the British taxpayer.

Someone please explain to me which bit of this isn’t stealing.

The Commission’s nineteenth-century attitude to transparency

Sometimes it’s clear MEPs are totally clueless about how the EU works.

For example the Commission gives out hundreds of millions of euros every year in grants to NGOs. These are sometimes famous organisations like Oxfam, and sometimes obvious political campaigners like the European Movement. Some do excellent work, others are a parasitic drain on the taxpayer.

You’d think Parliament would have a strong grip of the issues - carefully monitoring how taxpayers’ money is spent, holding people accountable, their eagle eyes watching out for irregularities.

But despite the colossal amounts involved, MEPs regularly bleat “can the Commission please tell me which NGOs it is funding?” And the Commission replies “No, we can’t. We can’t account simply and comprehensively for the money we give out. Please check the website of individual DGs where you may or may not be able to find some peremptory and meaningless list of grants”.

They then send you to this page from which you can sometimes gather some outdated and amateurishly presented lists that tell you nothing. A typical example is this one-page PDF from the DG for Economic and Financial Affairs. It lists grants from 2006 and seems to represent the most recent information available.

So when MEPs ask the same question over and over again do they not appear dimwitted?

Just ask again. And again.

On 18 September last year, Chris Heaton-Harris asked “Have any of the following organisations ever received money from the European Commission, and if so how much and over what period of time?” He then listed hundreds of obscure NGOs like Eurodad and OBESSU, as well as better known euro fan-boys like the Federalists.

The day before, Kilroy-Silk had asked for a rundown of EU funded organisations, to be met with waffle and hand-waving from Commissioner Grybauskaité

On 20 November 2007, Daniel Hannan asked which of the hundreds of NGOs attending the Agora took EU money. In February this year he wanted to know about a hundred more.

The Commission always provides an answer, but that answer is rarely designed to provide enlightenment. Furthermore, it frequently sends the salient details in the form of an attachment which disappears into the bowels of Parliament’s secretariat.

On 25 February, MEP Georgiou asked the Commission which Greek cultural NGOs it was funding. Recently, Bart Staes asked about the €800 million (yes, eight hundred million) paid to the International Organisation for Migration. MEPs Muscardini and Angelilli have asked which NGOs are getting funds in Afghanistan. Roger Helmer has asked about funding for the Church of England.

Amazingly, this week Ingeborg Graessle went back to square one, acting as if nobody had ever raised the question before: “How many NGOs currently receive financial support from the Commission, broken down by policy field and area of operation?”

This isn’t simply an insult to the people who provide the money. It’s cretinous.

The damage they do

Moreover, unpleasant facts about EU funding of NGOs in Palestine have started emerging which can be directly attributable to the Commission’s lack of transparency. Steinberg’s extraordinary report “Europe’s Hidden Hand” attempts, despite energetic EU obfuscation, to expose how money is reaching extremist propaganda organisations dedicated to verbally attacking Israel.

EU-funded Miftah is just one example:

…despite claiming to be non-partisan, in other areas of its work Miftah has described Israel as an apartheid state and reflects an immoral equivalence in equating terrorist attacks and IDF operations against terrorists which accidentally harm civilians. In addition, Miftah has referred to suicide bombers as “resistance fighters”.

More details of the report are beyond the scope of this article, but it’s well worth a read to understand that nobody really knows where our money is going in the middle east and what it’s being used for.

What is to be done?

The situation is intolerable. It’s nothing less than a refusal by the Commission to accept responsibility for spending our money accountably.

It also represents a dismal failure by MEPs to keep an eye on the executive.

Something must be done. The answer is obvious and comes in three parts:

1. Currently, the Financial Regulation obliges each DG to provide a minimum of information about grants they hand out. They often meet this legal obligation by publishing a meaningless and poorly-presented XL sheet at the end of the financial year, listing names and amounts. But nothing about what the money is for.We should force the Commission to provide full details of grant recipients, and to disclose what the money was intended for. They should do this within a month of the grant being awarded.

2. The Commission should force NGOs to disclose in general terms that they’re funded by our money, and publish specific details of what they’re spending it on. This openness should be a basic condition for receiving a grant. Within the limits of commercial confidentiality, this requirement should extend to third party organisations  commissioned by or working in partnership with, the main grant recipient.

3. MEPs should make an effort to avoid repeating the same questions over and over again. The Commission is highly practised at swatting them away.Instead, MEPs should cooperate to pool their knowledge, perhaps by setting up an independent website with the help of one of the political groups. This site would provide a clearing house in which MEPs would explain to the public what they know about the hundreds of millions of euros the Commission distributes to its clients.

The stakes are rising

Grasping the breathtaking extent of Commission funding for NGOs ain’t easy. But as NGOs become more important, the stakes rise. We already fund dozens of politically-motivated organisations, and the chances of our money funding extremists are rising. A revolution in the Commission’s nineteenth-century attitude to transparency is the only way to ensure our money is spent well and wisely.

Only a couple of items today, as Belgium is on holiday.

Europe should have a Freedom of Information Act, says ECAS. ” This would send a powerful signal that the EU is committed to reform. It would make the system more useable for ordinary citizens not jus stakeholders. Freedom of information places a duty on the Institution to locate and provide the material requested.”

Beware the EU! “MPs have been told to be wary of emails apparently sent by the European Parliament - amid fears they could be used by Chinese hackers to breach Parliamentary security”, says National Cyber Security. My advice? Everyone should be wary of emails sent by all the EU institutions, regardless of whether they’re genuine or not.

The greedy little pigs of Coreper are discussing the perks the proposed EU President should be given. Their largesse is presumably a form of inverted clientelism, because they seem to think if they reward their future boss well enough, they will reap the benefits.

The proposed full-time president of the European Union is to be given a personal jet, a palatial official residence and a personal staff of up to 22, under plans being considered in Brussels.

The French press has been very quiet about the recent allegations of fraud in the European Parliament.

However Jean Quatremer of left-wing daily Libération has paid more attention than most. And yesterday, his blog Les Coulisses de Bruxelles expressed its scepticism about Parliament’s recently declared resolve to make MEPs abide by the rules.

Why aren’t they already checking that MEPs are following the rules? Why did it take the secretary general - an administrative office - to request an internal audit, and not the bureau - a political body? Why did Parliament’s budgetary control committee, the recipient of the auditors’ report, decide not to make it public? If Paul van Buitenen had not broken his vow of silence and published a summary of the report, an action which has caused him problems, the citizens would be unaware of the sometimes fraudulent use of thei money. So much for transparency in an institution which spends its time lecturing the Commission about good governance and whose budgetary power is increasing ceaselessly.

The rest (in French) is here.