Eurocracy fattens on crisis

Bureaucracy loves the crisis, quips Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, raising the issue of increased spending on the legions of eurocrats in Brussels and elsewhere. The European Commission’s budget, writes the daily, is ever growing and new EU institutions are preparing to embark on anti-recession missions. Dubbed “ink castles” in eurospeak, their only task is to produce “thousands of pages of reports that no one needs.” Four such institutions are to become operative from January 2011: the European Banking Authority (EBA), the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), and the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB). Their combined annual budgets are to be worth €20 million.

“This is however a mere drop in the ocean of existing costs,’ stresses the daily. European Commission spokesman Michael Mann admitted recently that the cost of running the EU bureaucracy would rise by 4.4 percent next year, to €8.3 billion. But this is not all. Eurocrats are among the few bureaucrats in Europe who don’t need to fear a pensions freeze. David Allaby, chief editor of the British Public Servant Magazine, says the EU plays with words to create appearances of savings. “The new agencies are now called ‘structures’ rather than ‘institutions’ but there are no real cost cuts to be noticed here”.