As if the £15 million Parliamentarium (the propaganda temple Jonathan Isaby wrote about last October) wasn’t enough for the Brussels elite to spend on peddling ‘ever closer union’ to the public, plans are in motion to build an even more expensive “House of European History”.

Showing that the propaganda temple was merely a warm up, this new EU funhouse will seek to be:

“a place where a memory of European history and the work of European unification is jointly cultivated, and which at the same time is available as a locus for the European identity to go on being shaped…”

Their own words are enough to prove that the Funhouse is the Brussels elite’s new grandiose attempt to “shape” and “cultivate” a European identity with shameless propaganda. Perhaps it’s to convince the public that the inherently wasteful nature of the EU’s spending is worth it for the “future citizens of the European Union.”

Feeling doubtful about Brussels’ ability in objectively recounting history for visitors? Fear not: the “Committee of Excellence” that has so adamantly supported this project has assured the public in their manuscript that “a high-level Academic Advisory Board” will be appointed to ensure the “multifaceted and impartial presentation of historical facts.” So it should mention the existence of a Eurosceptic movement and some discussion of EU finances then?

Well, not quite. They instead say that there was some slight “confusion in some quarters of West European public opinion” over the “ultimate objective” of the EU post-Maastricht. With the EU funhouse approved by the European Parliament for funding in 2012 on account of it being “already under way”, we get a sense of the shoddy accounting practices of Brussels institutions.

This funhouse, scheduled for completion in 2014 but without a brick laid or a  budget more precise than £58 million to £137 million (of which £18.6 million will be from UK taxpayers), is nothing more than an insulting waste of money at a time when taxpayers are making savings.

Jeremy Warner writes for the Telegraph this morning, arguing that Britain is unlikely to get impressive results out of any renegotiation associated with the EU treaty.  He is right that a lot of the minor changes we’ve heard rumours about would be welcome but, in the grand scheme of things, “don’t add up to more than a hill of beans”, but if the Government is more aggressive there is a real opportunity here.  As our Chief Executive Matthew Elliott wrote for his blog at the Daily Mail recently, there is a “a golden opportunity to claw back powers from Europe” if the Prime Minister is willing to seize it.

Matthew gave a list of demands that we should be making, not an exhaustive platform but a very good start:

• Rejecting the European credo of ‘ever closer union’
• Providing for UK law to take precedence over EU law
• UK withdrawal from the atrocious and costly Common Agriculture Policy and Common Fisheries Policy
• A cut to the UK contribution to the EU budget – which has increased by some billions of pounds since the last Government threw away the rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher
• A UK opt-out from the Social Chapter which suffocates business with red tape and restricts the prospects for job creation
• Ending British contributions to the EU’s International Development aid budget – so much of which is unaccounted for
• Pursuing multinational defence ventures through NATO and only multilaterally via Brussels on an ad hoc basis
• Allowing the UK to taking full control over Justice, Home Affairs, Asylum and Immigration policy once again
• Restoring full UK control over taxation, particularly VAT

Jeremy writes that such proposals would be “red-line issues” for both Germany and France, and as a result our “position in the internal market would become marginalised. We’d end up like Norway, forced to adopt most of the foibles of the eurozone to keep trading with it, but with no say in its constitution.”

It is actually a a myth that Norway, and the other countries in a similar position like Iceland or Switzerland, are really in that unfortunate position.  Lee Rotherham wrote about this for the publication Controversies: From Brussels and Closer to Home:

The content of the [European Economic Area] Agreement is updated very regularly, but – and it is a huge ‘but’ – it can be blocked if either side does not want to include any single element of the acquis.  Each individual EFTA state has a veto on the entire agreement, since it is shared between the EEA and the EU acting as two parties.  This also means that national parliaments have a veto too.

He went on to cite a number of cases which show that the resulting regulatory burden is far greater than that felt by EU member states:

Firstly, according to a report by the EFTA Secretariat in Brussels for the Icelandic Foreign Ministry that was published in May 2005, only some 6.5% of EU regulations, directives and decisions had fallen under the EEA Agreement over the first eleven years of its existence, a total of 2,527 pieces of legislation.  Of those only 101 required a change to Icelandic laws already in place.

[...]

There was a similar question raised in the Norwegian parliament in 2004 about how much EU legislation had been implemented under EEA terms.  The then-government replied that over the period 199702993 there had been 11,511 pieces of legislation adopted by the EU.  Of those 2,129 fell under the EEA agreement, or about 18.5 per cent.

[...]

From its cost-benefit analysis, Berne assessed that the cost [to Switzerland] of continuing bilaterally with the EU would run at 557 milion Swiss Francs; gaining EEA terms would cost 737 million CHF; and joining the EU would come with a net annual billion of 3.4 billion CHF, and a gross bill of 4.94 billion Francs.

Britain’s position is far stronger than Jeremy suggests.  We don’t have to fear Norway or Switzerland’s fate.  It wouldn’t be so bad.  So the Prime Minister should be able to go and demand the repatriation of powers, that should never have gone to Brussels in the first place, with confidence.

Benjamin Franklin once observed that “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” I would venture that we could add a third: the inability of the European Union to guarantee that it has legitimately spent all of the taxpayers’ cash which the British and other EU member state governments have given it.

For today the European Court of Auditors – the body charged with auditing the EU’s accounts – has presented its annual report to the European Parliament and for the 17^th – yes, seventeenth – year running, it has concluded that the payments underlying the 2010 accounts are “still affected by material error”.

Should you wish to wade through it, the full 250-page document is here, but here are the killer extracts:

“The Court concludes that overall the supervisory and control systems are partially effective in ensuring the legality and regularity of payments underlying the accounts. The policy groups Agriculture and Natural Resources and Cohesion, Energy and Transport are materially affected by error. The Court’s estimate for the most likely error rate for payments underlying the accounts is 3.7 %.

“In the Court’s opinion, because of the significance of the matters described [above] on the legality and regularity of payments underlying the accounts paragraph, the payments underlying the accounts for the year ended 31 December 2010 are materially affected by error.”

What does all that actually mean?

As the ECA’s press release this morning explains, the “error rate” represents “the degree of non-compliance with the rules governing the spending, such as breaches of public procurement rules, ineligible or incorrect calculation of costs claimed to EU co-financed projects, or over-declaration of land by farmers”.

And that 3.7% error rate is as a proportion of the EU’s annual budget of €122.2 billion (£104.2 billion), which means that serious questions remain about a staggering €4.5 billion (£3.9 billion) of payments which have been made by Brussels – a figure which has increased since 2009.

And the error rate across the “Cohesion, energy and transport” budget alone was no less than 7.7%.

The fact that this happens year after year does not make it any more acceptable. Moreover, it underlines just how outrageous it is that the European Commission is seeking another increase in its budget when there are question marks over billions of its spending.

UPDATE: With a press release that anyone who knows the first thing about accounting concepts like material error would find hilarious, the EU is claiming that failing to get their accounts past the auditors yet again is some kind of triumph.  They claim that: “For the fourth year in a row, the EU’s annual accounts have received a clean bill of health from its external auditors.”

After extensive negotiations, European leaders have now announced another desperate attempt to save the euro and tackle the sovereign debt crisis. Allister Heath in City AM describes the packages as “barely a draft blueprint” and “not a plan that will save the Eurozone”. George Osborne has joined eurozone politicians in their belief that the answer to their problems is a common fiscal policy.

It is a convenient answer for politicians deeply committed to political integration in Europe but it raises some pretty difficult questions. If one of the problems is that the Greeks evade their taxes, will German tax collectors be dispatched? If the challenge for Italy is a combination of high debt and low expected growth will the Estonians take on that massive debt or be let loose to impose supply-side reforms?

Economist John Kay wrote a pretty comprehensive demolition of the idea a common fiscal policy was the way forward for the Financial Times yesterday:

“Conventional wisdom holds that the eurozone problem is the adoption of a common monetary policy without a common fiscal policy. But a common fiscal policy is not necessary for a successful monetary union. No such agreement existed under the gold standard. Nor does one exist now between the US and the several countries – including China – which have pegged their exchange rate to the dollar.

Nor is a common fiscal policy sufficient for a successful monetary union. Neither the European Commission nor the German government can put tanks on the streets of Athens. The only mechanism the European Union has, or can have, for imposing fiscal discipline in any country or region is to refuse further payments to that country or region. This is precisely the mechanism that has been deployed, with limited success.

[...]

The eurozone’s difficulties result not from the absence of strong central institutions but the absence of strong local institutions. A miscellany of domestic problems – rampant property speculation in Ireland and Spain, hopeless governance in Italy, lack of economic development in Portugal, Greece’s bloated public sector – have become problems for the EU as a whole. The solutions to these problems in every case can only be found locally.”

It is worth reading the whole article. Instead of supporting their vain attempt to fight reality, George Osborne should be telling eurozone leaders they need to face up to the currency’s failure. He certainly shouldn’t let even more of our money be staked on fresh bailouts through the IMF.

Disappointing but not surprising news from Brussels has revealed a discrepancy of over £80 million in expense claims for European Union bureaucrats in 2006 alone.

Robert Galvin, a British accountant who looked over the EU’s books, found a discrepancy of £81 million in “personal entitlement” payments to EU civil servants in 2006, and saw there was “considerable risk” of further abuses. For the EU to misuse taxpayers’ money like this is simply unacceptable.

David Lidington, the Minister for Europe, has responded to the findings by saying that “reports such as these are worrying and further emphasise the need for increased transparency across all EU institutional budgets”.

That’s very easy for him to say, but will anyone ever really be held to account for these failings? I fear we all know the answer to that one, given the EU’s record on dealing with financial mismanagement.

It’s not as if this is the first financial controversy to hit the European Union. In 1999, the entire European Commission, then led by Jacques Santer, resigned following a report “exposing fraud, corruption and mismanagement at senior levels”. While then-Shadow Foreign Secretary (and now Cabinet Office Minister) Francis Maude said that “British taxpayers need to be protected from being short-changed in Europe”, it is a disgrace that this warning still applies today.

Last year the European Court of Auditors refused to sign off the EU’s accounts. For the 16th year in a row. Yes, that’s right – EU accounts haven’t been cleared for 16 years. The two largest areas of EU expenditure – agriculture and regional spending – continue to be “materially affected by error”. Yet the Brussels machine still has the audacity to be demanding even more of our money.

I have previously written about how Members of the European Parliament and EU civil servants don’t seem to live in the real world – and they don’t seem like returning to reality any time soon.

MPs will today vote on a motion to give the British people a say on our relationship with the European Union for the first time in over 36 years. Given the waste that continues to come from Brussels (and Strasbourg), can they afford not to listen to the people?

Today, the House of Commons will be having a debate over holding a referendum on Britain’s future in the EU. It may help to put this into context.

The last time people in the United Kingdom were given a real choice on Europe was in 1975.  In that year, the Wilson Government lived up to a pledge for a vote on whether to remain in the EEC.

If you can’t remember the Wilson Government, you are already onto a loser. If you can’t remember the EEC – well, that rather proves the point.

To have actually voted, it means in effect you would have had to have been born before the Suez Crisis. Everyone born after Anthony Eden became Prime Minister has, in a sense, been disenfranchised.

We could even coin a new word for this – Macmillanisation. For decades we have been voting in general elections for parties in which the European issue was but one policy amongst many affecting our ballot, while a number of Prime Ministers (starting with Macmillan himself) increasingly sought to get us into the European Community or, in changing treaty after treaty, marched massively away from the 1975 remit. Meanwhile, only people born before this process began have had a genuine say on it.

Some will argue that having a referendum today is a breach of our traditions as a parliamentary democracy. That argument would hold water had there not been such a raft of referendums over the past decade, on elected local mayors, regional devolution (including changes to London Government), Scottish devolution, and Welsh devolution (twice).

Under David Cameron’s government, there has been a referendum on the Alternative Vote, which was in no manifesto, but none on a referendum on the European issue, on which all three major parties have made a commitment that they have failed to deliver while in power. Meanwhile, the UK Government has said it “will not stand in the way” of a referendum on Scotland’s future, with David Cameron even calling upon First Minister Alex Salmond to accelerate the process. National independence can be an issue for plebiscite, then, providing the blue on the flag is of the right hue.

The very nature of today’s three line whip, uniting the leadership of the major parties, demonstrates the need to remove this decision from the hands of the party managers. In general elections, all three big parties find it within their leadership’s interests to smother any debate on the EU. On the issue of EU membership, the UK is still locked in continental-style consensual politics, deepening the split between the public and its representatives. Nothing could be more dangerous for democracy.

Whatever your viewpoint – whether you believe the UK should leave the EU tomorrow; that the country needs a powerful mandate to negotiate a new system from within the structures of the existing treaties; or even and particularly if you genuinely believe in a democratically-developed and accountable federal system for the continent – wherever you come from, the time has come for two new generations of voters to be asked our opinion. Because, increasingly across the country, we find people holding strong opinions, but silenced ones.

At the start of the month we held a joint debate with the Daily Express about Britain’s relationship with the European Union. Aptly titled “We need to talk about Europe”, the point was made time and time again that discussion about Europe was being stifled despite the fact that it is an issue so many people feel strongly about, one way or another.

Apart from a minority of politicians who have consistently championed the issue, and debates over some statutory instruments, there has not been a substantial discussion about Britain’s relationship with the EU in the House of Commons for some time. It appears things might be about to change.

On tuesday, the backbench business committee approved David Nuttall MP’s motion for a debate on whether there should be a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. On Monday 24 October MPs will discuss this motion:

“This House calls upon the Government to introduce a Bill in the next session of Parliament to provide for the holding of a national referendum on whether the United Kingdom

 (a) should remain a member of the European Union on the current terms;

(b) leave the European Union; or

(c) re-negotiate the terms of its membership in order to create a new relationship based on trade and co-operation.”

The motion was originally scheduled to be debated on Thursday but has been brought forward to Monday under the auspices of allowing the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to attend.

While any vote in the debate will not bind the Government, it will take place against a highly-charged political background. While Greece burns and European leaders pontificate about how to get out of the debt crisis engulfing the Eurozone (tip: the answer is not more debt), there is growing anger at both the damaging effect of EU regulations in the British economy and the waste and profligacy that is commonplace across EU institutions. The latest example of the Eurocrats’ bizarre spending habits was exposed when we learned the £15 million cost of the EU’s new propaganda temple, the EU Parliamentarium.

The Daily Politics show visited the EU theme park and found EU officials more interested in eating cake than saving hard pressed taxpayers’ money:

Most national governments need to make big savings, but EU officials feel they are immune to the need to cut costs and consistently demand shocking increases in their budget. The disconnect between the priorities of taxpayers across Europe and the political agenda of the Eurocrats is stark. The scene is set for a passionate debate in the House of Commons.

It’s also worth noting that on Saturday The People’s Pledge will be holding their Congress for an EU referendum in Methodist Central Hall, Westminster. Speakers attending are from across the political divide, including both those supporting and opposing Britain’s membership of the EU. I will be there, along with our Political Director Jonathan Isaby and our Research Director John O’Connell. You can still get tickets and feel free to introduce yourself if you see us.

So how likely is it that the vote will pass? It’s reported that the Prime Minister may order Conservative MPs to vote against the referendum despite it containing a “third-way renegotiation option” similar to Conservative party manifesto commitments.  A number of Eurosceptic Tories will undoubtedly defy the whips but the Government may face a wider rebellion from new intake MPs, fed up of being bossed around and unhappy at pressure to vote against a referendum they support. For many, the renegotiation option will be highly appealing and may encourage them to support the motion on Thursday. MPs facing local constituency re-selection meetings as a result of the boundary review might not want to face Eurosceptic activists, having voted against giving the public a chance to vote on the relationship with the EU (a vote that no one under the age of 54 has ever had in this country).

And what will Labour do? They face the same questions over whether they want to give the public a say in Europe, with the added political dimension of the chance to inflict a bloody nose on the Coalition Government who could be split over this issue, given that the Liberal Democrats tend to support the European Union.

The congress on Saturday and the debate on the 24^th are likely to be lively.  Regardless of the outcome, one thing is clear: we need to talk about Europe.

Alastair Jamieson at the Telegraph recently reported that huge amounts of public money were lost by the EU after being used to prop up schemes to “reduce economic disparity” between countries and regions as part of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The total ERDF budget for England was £3.7 billion between 2000 and 2006 during which time the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) confirmed that £38.1 million (about 1%) had been misspent or unaccounted for. Losses could have totalled £236 million, but officials had managed to “claw back” £63 million and a further £133.9 million remains outstanding.

In 2010 the UK made a net ‘contribution’ to the EU of £9.2 billion (about the cost of the police and courts combined) and a total transfer to the EU of £19.7 billion (roughly a quarter of the education budget). Amongst the indispensable projects on which this money was misspent were:

• an enterprise scheme in Tees Valley where £1.8 million is unaccounted for due to “audit trail and document retention issues”;
• a rooftop plant nursery to provide seeds for biodiversity projects, which lost more than £300,000 after its promoter, Tower Hamlets Environment Trust, went into liquidation;
• regional film agency Screen East was responsible for £368,000 of “ineligible expenditure”.

The situation was so bad by March that even the EU had had enough and cut funding for the projects. Funding resumed in July after the DCLG, which allocates funding for projects, introduced tighter controls to prevent further losses.

The EU itself doesn’t seem too concerned. Out of a total budget of €140 billion (£122bn) the EU claims that “a 2% to 5% error rate is not big” which works out at £2.4bn-£6.1bn . This is fine, we are told,  since “this represents a considerable reduction from past levels”. Luckily, suspected fraud only accounted for about £244 million of the EU budget by their own estimates.

DCLG may be reintroducing weekly bin collections but there is still a large waste management problem to tackle with these EU budgets.

Slovakia’s parliament refused to ratify the expansion of the European Financial Security Facility (EFSF) on Wednesday. As usual with ‘No’ votes, a second vote was called and the decision was reversed on Thursday leaving the bailout fund ratified, the ruling coalition in tatters and Slovakia facing its second general election in less than two years.

The original vote failed to pass after Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), a junior partner in the ruling coalition, refused to endorse the proposal. It was later passed with the support of the opposition Direction – Social Democracy (Smer) in return for early elections.

In an interview with Germany’s Spiegel, SaS leader Richard Sulik explained why his party didn’t support the proposals.

“Slovakia has the lowest average salaries in the euro zone. How am I supposed to explain to people that they are going to have to pay a higher value-added tax (VAT) so that Greeks can get pensions three times as high as the ones in Slovakia?”

He’s got a point. Slovakia will now contribute €7.7 billion (about eleven per cent of GDP) to the bailout fund. With a population of 5.4 million and a GDP less than one per cent of the eurozone total, Slovakia will now be forced to prop up a country with living standards at 89 per cent of the EU average while their own is just 74 per cent.

It’s hard to see how prolonging the agony of a Greek default serves the purpose of Slovakian taxpayers. This will simply transfer more of the liability from the private sector to taxpayers when it does eventually happen. It’s hard to find someone arguing that Greece will pay its debts and the debate is now about how to manage an ‘orderly default’. This is not a guarantee as any ‘haircut’ taken on the bonds purchased will mean a loss for the taxpayer.

When asked if he had any advice for Greece after Slovakia escaped its own economic crisis a few years ago:

“They have to make cuts in the state apparatus. The Slovaks could also give them a few good ideas about the tax system. We have a flat tax when it comes to income taxes. Our tax system is simple and clear.”

Slovakia may be a small country but they have some big ideas and it’s not just Greece that can learn from them.

MEPs have voted to increase their budget by 4.2 per cent compared to last year, to €132.7 billion (£116 billion). That is what the European Commission originally proposed – before it was cut back to €129 billion by member states in July.

A spokesman for the British Government said, “In such challenging economic conditions, high growth in EU spending is both unaffordable and out of kilter with the tough measures that many countries are taking to consolidate public finances.” Nice words, but it is vital they don’t acquiesce to increases in the budget again when it is discussed by MEPs and EU ministers later this year.

The European Union’s bloated bureaucracy will be a big winner – in particular, its diplomatic service. Earlier this year, Foreign Secretary William Hague had to warn against a power grab by the European external action service, which might try to “usurp the functions and powers of national foreign ministries”. A report by Dr Lee Rotherham for the TPA in September 2009 warned that this was already happening. Baroness Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has been working hard to expand her budget and powers.

Last month I wrote about how EU officials have refused a minor change in their working hours which would have saved £870 million. MEP Lajos Borokos summed up what many taxpayers would have felt on hearing the news: “The European Parliament is once again showing itself to be out of touch with the real world”.  Sadly, at a time when ordinary taxpayers face tax rises and inflation, and EU member states are making difficult budget decisions themselves, this vote for a budget increase only goes to confirm Mr Borokos’ point.

It may well have escaped your notice – probably because you have better things to do than to be looking for things to do in Brussels – but as of this week the Belgian capital has become home to a new “tourist attraction”.

On Friday the so-called Parliamentarium is opening – a brand new European Parliament visitor centre which has been paid for by the hard-pressed taxpayer at a cost of £15.5 million – nearly £5 million over budget and opening three years later than originally planned.

The official blurb about the exhibition – which aims to present the history of the EU to its citizens – could not make it sound more ludicrous:

“A highly varied presentation spread out over three floors holds the visitor’s attention. It consists of carefully harmonised narrative spaces, which lend three-dimensional expression to the contents of the exhibition… The Parliamentarium conveys the motto of the European Union, “United in Diversity”, in an emotional manner.”

And be in no doubt, it is propaganda central. The room entitled “United in Diversity” features “a walk-on map spread out over the floor, showing a Europe without borders” and enables visitors to “interactively acquire information on events that caused the European Parliament to draw up regulations that are valid and applicable throughout Europe”.

It includes a “light installation” entitled “Sky of Opinions”, while a special effort has been made to indoctrinate children of the need for the European Union to exist, with a mock-up of the Parliament chamber. Again, according to the official blurb, this will enable them to “learn what it means to actively participate in the idea of a united Europe”.

Some have dubbed it the EU’s very own theme park; I’m not sure about that, but it certainly seems like we’re being taken for a ride…

The European Commission has threatened to take legal action against the British Government over the rights of foreigners to claim benefits in Britain. British nationals are automatically considered to have the ‘right to reside’ but people of other EU nationalities are subject to an assessment first.

Discriminatory, says the Commission, which has given Britain a two month deadline to allow foreigners easier access to welfare in Britain, warning:

“Otherwise, the commission may decide to refer the UK to the EU’s Court of Justice.”

Changing the law to meet the demands could cost British taxpayers £2 billion a year as thousands of jobless EU nationals arrive with immediate eligibility for means-tested, residence-based benefits. The Commission is attacking not only the right of every member state to decide who is eligible for its benefits and why, but also the foundations of current welfare reform plans. The Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, spoke out against the move:

“This threatens to break the vital link which should exist between taxpayers and their own government. I sense this is part of a wider movement, coming in the same week as the proposals for a financial transactions tax across Europe which threatens to punish UK banks by decreasing their competitiveness abroad.”

Duncan Smith is rightly outraged at a ‘rising tide of judgements’ from European institutions, but taxpayers should be equally furious that a useful policy for preventing fraudulent use of our benefits system is being attacked by the unelected and the unaccountable. If Britain gives in to Brussels’ sabre-rattling the link between contribution and eligibility will be effectively destroyed.

The Government should simply ignore the warning and, if it becomes necessary, challenge the Commission in the EU Court of Justice. If the Commission wins, the Government should consider whether that decision might provide the circumstances for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.