EU STILL WRESTLES WITH FRAUD AND IRREGULARITIES OVER FARM SUBSIDIES
March 1st, 2012
BY ALAN OSBORN
IT is easy to think of the European Union's (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a more or less total rip-off when you read that a majority of the 27 member countries were asked to pay back some Euro EUR578 million of farm subsidies provided by the European Commission in 2010 (the last year for which figures are available) because of irregularities in spending, including lack of adequate control. It's a mind-numbing figure and, although the amount of actual criminal fraud is no doubt far less, the size of the correction makes clear that much ...
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