Fisheries - a positive gesture. The European Parliament shares the calls to make the fisheries policy more respectful towards the rightful inhabitants of the seas and oceans. It has voted in favour of the ban on cutting sharks' fins, which is then followed by throwing the thus mutilated shark back into the sea. The competent parliamentary committee had proposed allowing certain derogations - the plenary session retained the total ban. This measure will contribute to fighting the marketing of the fins, which is so cruel for the sharks. It is a limited measure but it is symptomatic because it confirms the new direction of the common fisheries policy that this column has commented upon on several occasions.
Partly unfair controversies on the running costs. The EU's administrative spending and the level of its senior officials' salaries did not play a significant role in the discussions at the last summit on the EU's new multiannual financial framework - this is understandable because this category of spending has a virtually insignificant influence on European expenditure. Yet the British media, and some of the continental media too, have not missed the chance of speaking about this at large - with critical and sometime scandalous overtones. Faced with the austerity policies that are currently in force in all the member states, the situation of the EU officials has been described as a parallel universe because they apparently benefit from: an allowance for living far from their country of origin of 16% which is paid even to officials who have been living in Brussels for 30 years; 93 days of holiday per year; a level of salary that - for the highest - goes over that paid to a prime minister in some countries (not to mention the cases of Messrs Barroso and Van Rompuy). The comparisons with François Hollande, who reduced his presidential allowance, or Mario Monti, who renounced that of a prime minister, have been mentioned. And going on like this, even the number of bottles in the cellars of the institutions has been counted - as well as other details.
The analyses have nonetheless brought to the forefront that for the most part the EU's management is determined by political decisions in which the officials have no say - the moving of the sessions of the European Parliament from Brussels to Strasbourg costs between €120 million and €160 million per year! The behaviour of a few MEPs has also been cited - apparently Nigel Farage has only been to the fisheries committee that he belongs to once. Overall, the institution whose running costs went up the most between 2005 and 2012 is the European Parliament - from €1.2 billion to €1.7 billion.
In any case, the running costs of the institutions are minimal in the face of the loopholes and abuses observed in the member states. See further on for a small example.
Clever budgetary formula. Among the solutions allowing the EU's 2014-2020 financial framework to be defined, let me stress that of Pierre Audy MEP - approving the overall allocation proposed by the European Commission, but realising it in two phases. During the first phase (three years from 2014-2016) the credits would remain limited so as to leave member states time to put their accounts in order and to ratify the Stability Treaty. In the second phase, from 2017-2020, the budget would be increased to reach the global amount proposed by the European Commission. And it would especially be financed by the own resources which would have been introduced in the meantime.
Mr Audy recalled that everything will change in 2014 - a new president of the European Parliament, a new Commission, a new president of the European Council; and even perhaps the exit of the UK from the EU. The European elections will enable - with their electoral campaigns - everything to be debated.
European funding to a family from the Mafia. This column has already observed that most of the wastage and fraud in the use of the Community budget comes after the transfer of European money to the recipient member states. A few days later, a scandal erupted in Italy - from 1997-2004 one the of the recipients of European subsidies to farmers, distributed under the responsibility of the member states, was the brother of Toto Riina - the famous boss of the Sicilian Mafia, who along with his brother has been sentenced to several years in prison. It is an example of the loopholes criticised by the EU's Court of Auditors. The abolition of these loopholes would allow the reduction - to be desired in this case - of European spending. (FR/transl.fl)