The Great European Rip-off: How the Corrupt, Wasteful EU is Taking Control of Our Lives

by David Craig, Matthew Elliott

In this EU referendum year, it's time for people across Europe to look at what really goes on in Brussels in our name.

It has been estimated that the EU costs us around £1,000 billion a year - an incredible £2000 for every man, woman and child in Europe. So what do we get for our money? Politicians and administrators selflessly working to bring us efficient government? Well-targeted regulations that promote economic prosperity? A safe and free society? A well-protected environment? Help for people in poorer countries?

Or is our money being squandered by a self-serving euro-elite of unaccountable politicians and incompetent bureaucrats, or else devoured in a feeding frenzy of fraud and corruption where a few lucky insiders become unimaginably rich at our expense? And is the tsunami of regulation pouring out of Brussels in reality strangling industry, destroying jobs, restricting personal freedom, desecrating the environment and further impoverishing the developing world?

Using their extensive network of insider sources, David Craig and Matthew Elliott smash through the secrecy and disinformation that are the Brussels hallmark to reveal what our European rulers are really getting up to. The result is a horrifying story of bureaucracy, hypocrisy and kleptocracy - and how we are all suffering as a result.

Genres: Politics, Economics

336 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2009

Reviews

[Annemarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should have read it when I bought it years ago. So informative and also crazy how inefficient the EU institutions seem to function and squander EU tax payers money via among other the infamous CAP. I love the suggestions how to improve but it seems highly unlikely these will be implemented...

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely scandolous what they are doing. Only read if you have low blood pressure!

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant expose of the dangerous entlty that the EU has become and plans to be.

[Marc Maitland]

Every time I read a book about the European Union, become increasingly angry at what has happened to Britain (and every other country that belongs to the E.U.), and the sheer audacity that the political class has wreaked this havoc on our lives, counterbalanced by incredulity that we – the subjects of this stinking, corrupt, bureaucratic dictatorship – have allowed it to happen!



On SO many levels an organisation like the European Union just does not work. Worse than that, the positive harm it causes both to its own oppressed masses, as well as those even less fortunate in the World (such as humans in Third World and the wildlife of this planet) ought to make every one of us demonstrate with fare more vigour than those demonstrating against “university fees” and so-called wars on terror. Nobody who reads this book will be left in any doubt whatsoever that the E.U. has failed, is failing, and will always fail.



I congratulate the authors of this book for doing the public service of highlighting the massive waste (at best) and corruption (at worst) which has meant that the “Court” of Auditors has refused to approve its accounts for 13 successive years. What has been created here (quite deliberately) is a new system of government that self-perpetuates a pan-European political class that has only one interest: feathering its own nest. This, it has done at vast public expense, treating its colonial subjects with increasing contempt.



The only fault I can find with the book, is the naïve conclusion that by reining back some powers, and massive reorganisation (which for the E.U. is a constitutional impossibility anyway) that in some way the E.U. can be made into a fair and workable institution. It cannot. It will, like all “Earth’s proud empires pass away”, the only question is when, and in what manner. Will there be a sensible reordering of European democracy (the Perestroika method) or will there be bloodshed (the Gadaffi method). I would not hold out much hope for avoiding the latter – once people realise how a small corrupt elite has stolen their democratic birthright!

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in the weeks leading up to the UK’s referendum on EU membership. From my four-star rating, you probably assume that I voted to leave. You’d be right. In The Great European Rip-Off, Craig and Elliott provide innumerable cases which demonstrate just how over-ambitious and decadent the European Union is. Its exploitation of impoverished non-European states, ludicrous payments and compensation for MEPs, untenable claims to be pro-environment, use of blackmail and – perhaps most infamously – excessive bureaucracy, and many more failures thoroughly highlighted by the authors, have suggested to me that Britain made a wise decision on June 23rd. Hopefully we’re the first of many secessions from a disastrous and greedy experiment.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disgusting Picture of Systemic Abuse

This is simple disgraceful . Given the state of most people's finances in Europe. Especially Southern these people should be ashamed of themselves. But they probably don't understand the word.

[David Harrington]

Wan t know the whole of the euro zone is currently fucked up? Read this book.