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A Princely Sum
Food aid charity Oxfam claims that Prince Albert of Monaco is paid £200,000 annually by the Common Agricultural Policy.
Albert, believed to be worth around £1.35bn, receives the handout for a 700-hectare cereal farm believed to be across the border in France. The crown prince of Monaco isn't even an EU citizen.
France obscures the destination of its CAP subsidies, and for good reason. Oxfam's detective work reveals that the largest two agribusiness recipients of EU taxpayer aid were paid 1.7 billion Euros last year. 70 percent of farmers received only 17 percent of the CAP cash - so much for the myth that CAP handouts prolong Europe's agrarian daydream of small farmers working the soil.
This is in keeping with other estimates of CAP spending - the BBC reports that "It has been calculated that 80% of the funds go to just 20% of EU farmers, while at the other end of the scale, 40% of farmers share just 8% of the funds."
It's a similar picture in Britain, where sugar giant Tate & Lyle is the major beneficiary of CAP aid.
Agriculture accounts for just 1.6 percent of EU GDP, but almost half the EU's budget - around 40 billion Euros a year - is spent on the CAP.
