International

A minimum of 11% of the €36.6 billion which the EU spends annually on regional projects should not have been paid out, according to findings published by the European Court of Auditors. Ewout Irrgang, Member of Parliament for the SP, reacting to the revelations, said: “Subsidies paid out twice, subsidies for fallow land paid out under the guise of landscape management, subsidies for water towers which were never in use. The EU wastes billions, most of it in richer member states such as Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Money is paid by the member states to Brussels only to be paid back to the member states, a practice which should be stopped. Aid should only go to poor member states, and of course it must be under strict control.”

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of East European communism, neoliberal capitalism also seems to have lost its power of attraction. According to an opinion poll conducted by the BBC in twenty-seven countries across the world, only 11% of those interviewed retain any faith in actually existing capitalism. The rest believe that through-going reforms are needed, while a quarter hold that capitalism in its present form is irreparably defective, and want to see a new socio-economic system. “High time that politicians really began to listen to the people," says SP Senator Tiny Kox.