December 5, 2004

CODIFYING CORRUPTION:

Brussels and a culture of corruption (Marta Andreasen, 12/06/04, Times of London)

THERE HAS been much optimistic talk about how the new Commission and the new constitution will reform the European Union. I am not convinced that either will tackle the EU’s most pressing problem: Brussels’s culture of unaccountability and lack of control of its funds.

Opportunities for fraud are open and they are taken advantage of. The most elementary precautions are neither taken nor even contemplated. The reverse is the case. People such as myself who attempt to bring openness and accountability to the system are pursued, suspended and dismissed.

In 2002 I was appointed chief accountant to the European Commission to help — as I then believed — to reform the inadequate systems and stamp out fraud. I drew attention to those inadequacies; I refused to sign accounts that I believed unreliable; for two years I was suspended from my job, obliged to live in Brussels yet forbidden to enter any EU building; and in October I was dismissed, the charge against me being disloyalty, a decision against which I am appealing.


Why not steal--you're not even robbing your own countrymen after all.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 5, 2004 11:25 PM
Comments

Public money is the cheapest money of all; taking it seems to the thief as if he is committing a victimless crime.

Posted by: Morrie at December 6, 2004 12:08 AM

What do you think it is that's built-in to people to trust government over all else? (themselves, family, friends, church, neighbors...)

I think that delusions cannot be maintained locally, and that it is not trust, but a result of anti-trust in the local (themselves, family, friends, church, neighbors...)

I've never been able to make the above into a winning argument, however. Nobody trusts me :-(

Posted by: Randall Voth at December 6, 2004 3:29 AM

The further removed people get from serious accountability the more likely they are to steal. Wow what a surprise!

This is no different from Kofi Annan using the Oil-for-Food program as a family trust fund.

Posted by: Bart at December 6, 2004 10:01 AM
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