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Commission Voted Off Hook
More corruption and dodgy dealings from the EU: The European parliament has voted by a huge majority to let the EU commission off the hook for its part in the Eurostat fraud scandal.
The decision effectively means that commissioners cannot be held accountable for fraud which takes place under their watch. As Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde points out, EU executives now need only make sure that their staff keep them in the dark about their departments to stay out of inquiries in future.
The vote comes as investigators claim that the £3 million of taxpayers' money known to have been stolen in what has been described as a "vast enterprise of looting" was only the tip of the iceberg. Earlier this year investigative reporter Hans-Martin Tillack was held by Belgian police on EU orders: Tillack has been running a very public probe into corruption at the European fraudbuster's office.
Last year, the EU court of auditors declared that it could pass only 9% of the European budget as "clean." This is the ninth year running that the court has refused to give the EU's accounts a clean bill of health.
