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EU Commission: Corruption Across EU Costs €120 Billion
cold fjord writes with news that the EU has completed its first report on corruption in member states, and the results aren't looking too good. From the article: "'The extent of corruption in Europe is 'breathtaking' and it costs the EU economy at least 120bn euros (£99bn) annually, the European Commission says. EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem has presented a full report on the problem. She said the true cost of corruption was 'probably much higher' than € 120bn. Three-quarters of Europeans surveyed for the Commission study said that corruption was widespread, and more than half said the level had increased. 'The extent of the problem in Europe is breathtaking, although Sweden is among the countries with the least problems,' Ms Malmstroem wrote in Sweden's Goeteborgs-Posten daily. The cost to the EU economy is equivalent to the bloc's annual budget. For the report the Commission studied corruption in all 28 EU member states. The Commission says it is the first time it has done such a survey. "
We do not have "corruption commission" in the States, therefore we do not have any solid figure of how much corruption is costing the American taxpayers.
However, there are cases that are so notorious that they can't keep it secret any longer ... such as that obamacare website that cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions - a website assigned to a company without any open bidding, and the company just so happened (yeah, right) to belong to a university classmate of Michelle Obama.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Why are countries most affected by the debt crisis also the most corrupt?
I think your calculator needs new batteries.
So submit a story instead of whining.
You gotta add at least one digit to that.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
120 billion euro? Internets, you so funny.
To put things in perspective:
1. Estimates of just medicare/medicaid fraud in the US easily approach $100 billion. I'd bet those estimates are conservative.
2. Medicare/medicaid spending is only about a fifth of the US budget. (That doesn't necessarily mean that total US fraud is 5 times the above figure, but suggests it's much larger than $100B.).
3. The Eurozone's GDP is about equal to (slightly larger than) that of the US.
Put it all together, and tell me with a straight face that fraud in the Eurozone is 120 billion euro (about $160 billion). Keep in mind that for every Sweden there's an Italy.
Yeah, it's "probably" much higher, like the Broncos "probably" lost.
The commision should resign in shame like last time...
Ummm.... No it isn't.
I cannot make heads or tails of your comment or even posit a guess as to whether you were serious, trolling, joking, or just plain ignorant...
Or, what in the world, if it is the case that you were infact being serious rather than trolling around, the actual point you were trying to get across.
When you allow Greece and Italy to be part of your organization.
and problem solved.
Sheesh, people will fuck anything. Do you watch out for needles? They're not so easy to find.
Try like 38 Trillion if you do a little Math on the LIBOR rigging.
None of these people EVER go to jail.
Remember that when you go to get a small business loan and want to work for yourself, instead of going on Welfare and working 50 hour weeks at 4 different jobs.
Sorry we can't give you a loan, you are not Microsoft, or McDonalds.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Yeah, because submitting a story guarantees it'll be published.
Let's see how this plays out....
That is what happens when the EU keeps including all kinds of countries in south and eastern Europe that do not have their affairs in order. Where human rights are for those who can afford them and where government employees need the extra tidbits to make a living. And north western Europe pays the cost of it.
When I was in Bruxelles a few years ago, two guys at the next table in the restaurant openly dealt about removing unwanted topics from a meetings agenda. In the end, an envelope was handed over to the gouvernment employee.
Corruption is like rats. The more rats you notice or even see in an area, the bigger the population.
There are people e.g. in the EUs purchase chain that cannot be passed without "additional payments", and all companies involved happily pay and keep their mouth shut out of fear that the will be left out for future contracts. And nobody is going to do anything about the corruption in the EU, as too many people profit from it, at least enough people to effectively prevent any successful control mechanisms.
The results come from a survey, it's an opinion. We all know media dictates opinions, except in italy: there is no corruption on italian tv's.
Same as dictatorship but we give you the ilusion of choice!
tons of stuff that is called corruption over here is seen as harmless lobbying and such on the other side of the pond.
EU Commission: Corruption Across EU Costs €120 Billion
Swiss banking commission: Corruption Across EU Earns us interest on €100 Billion
Great to know corruption costs so much money (as if we didn't know that already)..
But what are they gonna do about it? I guess the won't as the corruption is in high places and they want to continue receiving their scammoney..
You do not understand what the European Union is. It is not an economic alliance. It's sole purpose is to prevent large war breaking out in Europe (cue WWI and WW2). Efficiency, anti-corruption, economic competitiveness are all tertiary compared to the great aim of peace, complete with doves carrying olive branches, lions and lambs napping together and whatnot.
If the EU ever falls apart, Britain, France and Germany will jump at each other's throat, Russia will invade Eastern Europe and the gunpowder barrel called the Balkans will simply explode. The use of nuclear weapons will lead to WORLDWIDE destruction.
Therefore EU must be kept together, no matter how much it costs and how much of that budget goes to waste. Anyhow, if a corrput person receives millions, he will spend them on Ferrari, yacht, villa and gambling. The money soon returns to the circulation in the economic sphere and no long-term loss is evident.
Wow, what a conspiracy theory bullshit. Like any other sovereign state or supranational organization, the EU is not required to be audited by a chartered accountancy, but is audited by the ECA. Every year the ECA signs off the accounts provisionally, the only problem is that the current rules for the EU account audit require a 100% compliance for a full sign off, which is something no entity will ever achieve. You just need one person to lose a single receipt and you are non-compliant. Only so far, nobody has seen the need to figure some more realistic rules, and until then the ECA report every year is an invitation to sensationalist media and conspiracy theorists. There's plenty wrong with the EU, but this really isn't the issue.
So no UTF-8, and not even any ISO-8859-1? What is this, the 1970s?
with a crappy economy the rising star in job security is anything with "bureaucracy" in it.
nothing needs to be done/create and paper is shuffled.
once the economy has tanked enough, partly thanks to "red tape" and a efficient bureaucracy (everything’s relative, this
is from the point-of-view of bureaucracy) graft and corruption are chosen by all parties to at least "get something moving" (the "fuk-it" moment).
this again puts more power into the hands of the bureaucratic machinery (i got dirt on you).
again, nothing is ever created. it is fake power and just a idea in peoples minds (scare them with legalese): if you cannot look at a piece of paper money and NOT see just paper, then you can understand "fake power".
so in conclusion having a "paper shuffling job from the government" is sweet and gets defended "the wrong way" in times of tanking economy.
this automatically leads to corruption and graft and even more bureaucracy until it is "too big to fail" and just morphs into the new normal state
without actually addressing the root cause of a floundering economy : )
"MEOR bureaucracy to the rescue(tm)!"
You just need one person to lose a single receipt and you are non-compliant.
Where I work, if you lose a receipt then you can either ask the merchant if they can print a replacement otherwise you're held personally liable for the charges. I guess things are different in government.
We used to have corruption, then we legalized it through the Citizens United vs FEC case. It IS the system now.
If you're an entrepreneur, you pay over 55% in (taxes + social security employer's part). Even for a 1-person start-up company.
I always thought this was rather on the high side. Please elaborate, or I'm assuming you're talking out of your ass.
Americans get uppity about mistresses as it means the politician is compromised in some way. The politician could be blackmailed over it. The politician is not trustworthy. It implies that they are corruptible and have lied and makes us wonder what else they have lied about.
In our military, extra martial affairs are illegal for these very reasons.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
is not that bad ;)
It can't be published if nobody submits it. Take a chance, just like everybody else that submits one.
I'm wondering if you actually read the NY Times article you linked to, and have you read anything since? stunning-new-report-undermines-central-gop-obamacare-claim
Remember Lord Acton's maxim: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The bigger government gets, the more corrupt it is. The larger government is, the wider scope for graft, fraud and kickbacks.
This is one reason the Soviet Union was among the most corrupt and incompetent governments in the world.
The longer a welfare state runs, the more corrupt and dependent on government handouts its people become.
Greece is the inevitable endpoint of the European cradle-to-grave welfare state. All welfare states end up there eventually.
"Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18."
"What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1, or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10 grandparents have six kids have four grandkids - i.e., the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility - the point from which no society has ever recovered. And compared to Spain and Italy, Greece has the least worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe."
"So you can’t borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you don’t have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when 10 grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?"
TFA says:
The cost to the EU economy is equivalent to the bloc's annual budget.
What is this number? It is supposed to compare to 120 bn EUR of corruption, but the sum of EU member states budgets is much much higher. Is it the budget of the EU itself?