Presenters on Hungarian radio station NeoFM's daily morning show, "Bumerang", have joined the long line of people trying to make sense of the bizarre projects that have received EU funding. Listeners have been asked to choose their favourites amongst our list of examples of EU waste and send in any of their own.
Polling highest is the example of €500,000 given to two Swedish fishermen to scrap their fishing vessels, only to find them later applying for further EU subsidies to buy new, smaller boats, which were subject to a different set of EU rules. Other contenders included Hungary's very own €411,000 dog "rehabilitation centre", which never materialised and the €16,000 given to Tyrolean farmers to boost their emotional connection with the landscape.
But the exercise may have produced an unintended side effect. This is what the presenters had to sat at the end of the show, "We are so stupid! Why aren't we also applying for EU funding to raise the popularity of European Radio. We'd only need €100,000."
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Another example of waste :
There is another European project with an equally appalling record in wasting EU funds. This is the SESAR program to create a new Air traffic Management system Created along the same lines as Galileo, it is also formed around a "cartel" of western country European companies with a Joint Undertaking run by the Commission DGMove. The plan is to develop with with big European companies (subsidize?) with approx 2.1BillionEuros budget. The program is basically a mess. The SESAR joint undertaking has been in existence for 3 years and has delivered nothing concrete other than to have an impressive attendance at "high level" meetings that have little to do with the development of what should be a serious industrial program. Currently it is difficult for anybody external to access detailed information on the program or its accounts.
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