The EU institutions are in the middle of their annual budget ping-pong. The European Commission proposes the annual budget, and then the European Parliament and Council of the European Union (where Member States are represented) decide on the budget. The Commission’s opening shot for the 2012 budget, published in April...
I managed to avoid the milk-farmer chaos in Brussels on Thursday and Friday – hundreds of tractors driving slowly to bring protests about low milk prices to the European Council. But what exactly are the farmers whingeing about, and what should be done about it? This piece from EUObserver has...
What’s up with Germany? What do they have to hide? I attended a press conference organised by farmsubsidy.org yesterday entitled “Who wants to be a farm subsidy millionaire?” where Jack Thurston, Brigitte Alfter and others presented the latest data on CAP payments using the latest statistics on agriculture spending due...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHqpzjMTD Oh, you can just imagine them chortling away in the TaxPayers’ Alliance producing the above video about the Common Agricultural Policy. It contains a heady mix of fact and prejudice and there’s even a report to go with it. The ‘stats’ in the TaxPayers’ Alliance report are correct in...