The Greek prime minister has vowed to get to the bottom of how a scheme of fraudulent EU subsidy claims could have operated undetected in the country for years, as he admitted that the scandal had revealed “the state’s inadequacy” in dealing with corruption.
Faced with revelations that “fake” farmers had been scamming designated agricultural funds to the tune of a reputed €290m (£249m), Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday a special taskforce would be set up to “immediately and exhaustively” investigate the illegal payments.
Fraud? In EU farming subsidies in Greece?
Whatever next?
The sums quoted seem surprisingly small….
The EU CAP budget is €60Bn a year so the €50m or so a year in fraud from Greece isn’t even in the rounding error column.
This is my surprised face
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-14838665/tariff-warning-trump-outsmart-us.html
We all know this joke :
Greek mayor visits Italian town in a twinning ceremony.
Italian mayor says “See that bridge ? We built it with EU money. By only making it one lane and putting in traffic lights, we saved a huge wad of cash and pocketed the rest of the subsidy.”
Next year, the Italian mayor goes to Greece.
The Greek mayor shows him around the town and points “See that bridge ? We built that with EU money.”
“What bridge ?”
Sigh
Round up the usual suspects.
Interested,
Up like a dick at a strip club pops the telegraph markets editor:-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/01/trump-triggers-dollars-worst-start-to-year-since-1973/
A weaker dollar might not be the worst thing for US jobs and exports but no, Orange Man bad and stupid.
O/T
As pride month ends here’s yet another story about those things that never happen:-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/01/pride-surrey-founder-told-rape-victim-12-keep-secret-crime/
The closing paragraph:-
Alex Kirkler, defending Ireland, told the court his client did not abuse his position within the Surrey Pride organisation to commit these offences.
I’m not entirely clear what he’s getting at. Is m’learmed friend suggesting that some credit is due to his filthy client on account of the fact it was unofficial rather than work-related child buggery?
Did you see the pictures of the bloke? He makes Jimmy Savile look entirely normal and trustworthy.
The Alphabet letter people seem to breakdown into two camps:
* The normal ones who just want to get on with life and don’t go out of their way to flaunt their sexuality.
* Flamboyant, 3rd sector Leftist aligned nonces & mentalists who shouldn’t be trusted near anything with a hole they can fuck.
@John
A weaker dollar might not be the worst thing for US jobs and exports but no, Orange Man bad and stupid.
I bet that bloke has never employed anyone.
I maintain my initial position that the tariffs were partly about forcing people to the negotiating table – which is happening, Canada dropped its US tech tax yesterday – and partly about trying to do something about China.
Clinton should never have pushed for them to get into the WTO but given that he did, and that their main USP is slave labour, it seems at least reasonable to impose other costs on their shit if the cost of jobs isn’t it.
My original post was by way of pointing out that everyone said Trump would immediately destroy the US economy was wrong, though his Big Beautiful Bill and its trillions of extra $ in debt won’t help.
On Tim’s original point, I well remember it being discussed on here in 2010ish that the Greeks were claiming subsidies for olive groves the coordinates for which placed them some miles offshore in the Med or the Aegean or the Ionian, or probably all three.
The idea that the Greeks are going to make serious efforts to stop siphoning German money into their own pockets is hilarious. Luckily they’re about to get access to ours again soon.
Nearly as funny, to bring things full circle, as the EU moaning about the US imposing import tariffs and other restrictions on EU goods.
” Putting me, the 11th Duke of Thessalonka, in charge of EU funds? What were they thinking?”
If the EU didn’t have scams, it wouldn’t have any prospective new members.
Every single one of their “candidate countries” is hoping to extract subsidies and bennies from mug Krauts, none intend to be net contributors. It’s like a Ponzi scheme that’s deliberately recruiting greedy and dishonest people with no money. Somebody’s gonna be badly disappointed, sooner rather than later. But by that point Thierry Breton will have found all the unbummed boys in each prospective member state.
Interested – Experts speaking to DailyMail.com warned that Americans should take his note with a grain of salt.
“Experts”, lol. Never right about anything, but they’re “experts”.
John – Stephen Ireland, 42, who co-founded Pride in Surrey in 2018, has been jailed for 24 years after he raped the “extremely vulnerable” child at the flat he shared with his then partner and co-defendant David Sutton, 27, in Addlestone on April 19, 2024.
What’s shocking about this is how not shocking it is. Who thought these prancing degenerates *weren’t* diddling children? If somebody tells you they’re “queer”, check their bloody hard drive.
“homophobia”, a fancy word for pattern recognition:
Stephen Ireland, 40, co-founded LGBTQ+ group Pride in Surrey in 2018. He is charged with 20 offences, including one count of raping a child, three counts of causing a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity and one count of sexual assault on a child.
He allegedly spoke of kidnapping schoolchildren, sexually abusing boys and visiting a swimming pool to “perv”, a trial at Guildford Crown Court heard.
“Pride”, eh? I prefer prejudice.
Let me guess, those farms were wind farms, right?
For putting in only one lane the EU trebled the subsidy under the 15 minute city initiative.
I remember this from back in the 2000’s:
“Only 324 residents of a wealthy neighborhood in Athens admitted to owning swimming pools on their tax returns. To verify the truth, Greek tax authorities studied satellite photos of the area and found a total of 16,974 pools”.
“A weaker dollar might not be the worst thing for US jobs and exports but no, Orange Man bad and stupid.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-trump-is-starting-shape-job-market-2025-07-03/
US born worker numbers rise by over 2m, foreign born ones drop by over 500k so far in 2025. That Trump fellow really doesn’t know what he’s doing…..doesn’t he know the purpose of the US economy is to enrich everyone except US citizens?