Sir, – Donal Denham (February 24th) is suggesting we shrink the EU budget. Some 43 per cent of the EU's budget is spent on natural resources, which cover the common agricultural and common fisheries policies, and rural and environmental measures. Mr Denham might ask Irish farmers what they think of his suggestion.
I agree with him, however, that when looking for potential cut-cutting we should “take a serious look at the Brussels bureaucracy itself”.
The figures are easily and freely accessible: the numbers working for the European Commission stand at 33,000, of whom 7,500 work for the European Parliament and 3,500 for the European Council, a total of 44,000.
These civil servants are responsible for a significant proportion of what goes on economically, legally, educationally and socially in a European Union of about 500 million inhabitants. The exact number employed by Dublin City Council is not as freely and easily available, but I can give a continental comparison: the city of Munich, population 1.5 million, employs 33,000 people. To demand cuts of the extraordinary slim and efficient administration in Brussels (6 per cent of the EU’s budget and 0.06 per cent of its GDP) is utterly misguided. By the “worst excesses of Brussels” he may only have the 27 “well-heeled, elitist, non-elected European commissioners” in mind. Their salaries, however, in the overall budgetary framework, are really a negligible quantity.
The relatively high pay of EU staff has to be held against their competence and quality: each year an average of 100 new recruits successfully pass the competitions out of a total number of 25,000 to 30,000 applicants! – Yours, etc,
J FISCHER,
Curraghviller,
Ballina,
Co Tipperary.