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It never fails to infuriate me how deeply this type of corruption is present at every level of the EU. Are you an industrial pizza producer? Get 200.00 euro fu

by wrnr 7y ago

It never fails to infuriate me how deeply this type of corruption is present at every level of the EU. Are you an industrial pizza producer? Get 200.00 euro funding to bake patatos in the pizza ovens. Want a digital agency to build you a new website? Just have the agency bill it as multi-language communication services, and get back 40%. A public tenders for an IT security audit at a local municipality tailer made for a company with the political connections. Over two million euro divided between industry partners to participate in research on "decentralised computing" but never install the software that was developed. Not that it mattered because the software didn't work. I worked as a subcontractor of a subcontractor on the project and was the only outside of academia to try it out and found some obvious errors. Are you a student who attends university in a different city than your officially domicile and need to vote in the next election? Send an email with your ID and student card to get a rebate on the travel expenses. You don't get cancer by just having one cell in your body multiply uncontrollably. It needs friends to trait hormones and enzymes with.

raverbashing 7y ago
Yeah that's a lot of "citation needed" and conflating incentives with corruption. Or maybe incentives are corruption and the oil and corn businesses in the US are the worse offenders
- wrnr 7y ago
  Thats the thing, all of this is a mater of public record[1]. We like to pretent in the EU that the US stinks (and sometimes it does) but please let that not be an excuse not to wash ourselves. https://www.imec-int.com/drupal/sites/default/files/inline-files/COMBUST_Closing%20Leaflet.pdf https://www.imec-int.com/drupal/sites/default/files/inline-f...
  - scribu 7y ago
    You linked to a two-page PDF promoting some "big data" thing.
ChuckNorris89 7y ago
1000x this. I live in Austria right now and most start-ups here are funded with EU or Government grants. That's really nice but the problem is most of them are designed to suck up as much of that free no-strings-attached grant money as possible rather than build a successful product.
- fit2rule 7y ago
  Austrian start-up are a total scam. They're designed to milk those fat subsidies and do little else. It doesn't matter if you get 200,000 on your first application, 150,000 on the next .. you're not working to establish a product and build a market and add value to it - you're working to keep the grant writers happy.
- izacus 7y ago
  Do you have any source on this "most startup" thing? Because my experience in Vienna did not fit that bill and I wonder if you have actual numbers you've checked.
- flosstop 7y ago
  No just startups, there are established companies who take enough of their revenue from involvement in EU sponsored projects that it effectively become the sole purpose of their business. I've been involved in a few of these projects (for a fairly legitimate firm) but you encounter the same companies over and over again. One of the goals of these projects is often to do an initial development phase and then bring in a new tranche of companies to trial/expand what you have developed. There are groups of companies that have developed a symbiotic relationship where one of them gets into a particular project and then pulls in their fellows in the subsequent round. It is also common to see them tendering to diverse projects in the hope that one of them gets accepted and they all then pile into it. The formal review meetings that I have attended have been extremely uncomfortable because I know that the people are on stage flat out lying about what they have achieved. Generally all they have done is some token development so provide a few screenshots for a presentation and then talk about how it has revolutionised their business whilst pocketing the vast majority of the cash.
- megablast 7y ago
AlexMuir 7y ago
This is absolutely true. Popular European opinion is that the UK is insane to leave the EU. But a huge part of the EU is just swimming in bullshit. I knew many middle class Hungarians whose family friends scored them a nice EU grant to start some sort of business. Obviously 99% of those businesses went nowhere. Rinse and repeat. The irony is that is actually deters real investment because why risk €100k of your own money when the business next door will rip-off your idea with €200k of free EU money. And that’s not to count the absolutely incredible mid and high level corruption that this article discusses. Source: lived in Hungary for 5 years
- tooop 7y ago
  So who is the asshole here? Sounds that it is Hungarians and not EU. It is the same thing as blaming the homeowner for leaving doors open and not the burglar.
- izacus 7y ago
  "Huge part"? "You knew"? "99%"? Got any citations number on those observed numbers and any basis to claim it was EU that did it? Or is this just you deciding that EU is bad and then fitting things to your view?
  - repolfx 7y ago
    Just go read stories from the UK Eurosceptic press over the decades. They've been digging up stories of EU corruption since forever. The only reason the UK is seen as "weird" by people in other EU states is because the press is ideologically loyal to the EU institutions throughout most of the world and doesn't report on or investigate this stuff. But in the UK they do (to some extent). Even look at this story. The NYT really wanted to go digging for dirt on Orban and Hungarian society in general, Orban being famous mostly for resisting EU integration and resettlement efforts, and being notoriously unpopular in Brussels. But they found they couldn't because the EU lacks even very basic levels of openness. You aren't going to read about EU corruption from them, that's for sure - the fact that they only just noticed this says they've been turning a blind eye for years. For instance, go look at the stories in the UK about farmers being paid to not breed pigs. I'd like to get paid to not breed pigs! I think I'd be good at it!
adlpz 7y ago
Could you point me to any sources where I can read more about this things, e.g. grants on "multi-language communication services" and such? Not meaning to doubt you, but it all seems a little too good (or maybe bad) to be true, doesn't it?
- wrnr 7y ago
  The 40% is an exaggeration, I got the number of the top of my head. But yes, the Flemish government has a number of these type of programs that pay for all sort of random things. Don't forget that the people administrating these schemes also need to get paid. https://www.vlaio.be/nl/subsidies-financiering/subsidiedatabank/ontwikkeling-en-vertaling-van-digitale-internationale https://www.vlaio.be/nl/subsidies-financiering/subsidiedatab... I've already posted a link for another source in another comment. Edit: This is how to get a refund for voting: https://vlaanderenkiest.be/faq/wanneer-krijgt-u-uw-reiskosten-om-te-gaan-stemmen-terugbetaald https://vlaanderenkiest.be/faq/wanneer-krijgt-u-uw-reiskoste...
  - tooop 7y ago
    Voting: how is it an EU thing? Provide a source for EU document because i certainly haven't heard anything like that in my country.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    The 40% is an exaggeration, I got the number of the top of my head. Why did you do that, the facts aren't hard to find and you may well learn something along the way.
  - afjl 7y ago
    There's nothing wrong with getting a refund for voting if you have to travel for it. Not refunding this travel could prohibit fairly poor people from voting. The idea is to encourage voter participation by removing the financial obstacle to voting.

by wrnr 7y ago

raverbashing 7y ago

Yeah that's a lot of "citation needed" and conflating incentives with corruption. Or maybe incentives are corruption and the oil and corn businesses in the US are the worse offenders

wrnr 7y ago
Thats the thing, all of this is a mater of public record[1]. We like to pretent in the EU that the US stinks (and sometimes it does) but please let that not be an excuse not to wash ourselves. https://www.imec-int.com/drupal/sites/default/files/inline-files/COMBUST_Closing%20Leaflet.pdf https://www.imec-int.com/drupal/sites/default/files/inline-f...
- scribu 7y ago
  You linked to a two-page PDF promoting some "big data" thing.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago

1000x this. I live in Austria right now and most start-ups here are funded with EU or Government grants. That's really nice but the problem is most of them are designed to suck up as much of that free no-strings-attached grant money as possible rather than build a successful product.

fit2rule 7y ago
Austrian start-up are a total scam. They're designed to milk those fat subsidies and do little else. It doesn't matter if you get 200,000 on your first application, 150,000 on the next .. you're not working to establish a product and build a market and add value to it - you're working to keep the grant writers happy.
izacus 7y ago
Do you have any source on this "most startup" thing? Because my experience in Vienna did not fit that bill and I wonder if you have actual numbers you've checked.
flosstop 7y ago
No just startups, there are established companies who take enough of their revenue from involvement in EU sponsored projects that it effectively become the sole purpose of their business. I've been involved in a few of these projects (for a fairly legitimate firm) but you encounter the same companies over and over again. One of the goals of these projects is often to do an initial development phase and then bring in a new tranche of companies to trial/expand what you have developed. There are groups of companies that have developed a symbiotic relationship where one of them gets into a particular project and then pulls in their fellows in the subsequent round. It is also common to see them tendering to diverse projects in the hope that one of them gets accepted and they all then pile into it. The formal review meetings that I have attended have been extremely uncomfortable because I know that the people are on stage flat out lying about what they have achieved. Generally all they have done is some token development so provide a few screenshots for a presentation and then talk about how it has revolutionised their business whilst pocketing the vast majority of the cash.
megablast 7y ago

AlexMuir 7y ago

This is absolutely true. Popular European opinion is that the UK is insane to leave the EU. But a huge part of the EU is just swimming in bullshit. I knew many middle class Hungarians whose family friends scored them a nice EU grant to start some sort of business. Obviously 99% of those businesses went nowhere. Rinse and repeat. The irony is that is actually deters real investment because why risk €100k of your own money when the business next door will rip-off your idea with €200k of free EU money. And that’s not to count the absolutely incredible mid and high level corruption that this article discusses. Source: lived in Hungary for 5 years

tooop 7y ago
So who is the asshole here? Sounds that it is Hungarians and not EU. It is the same thing as blaming the homeowner for leaving doors open and not the burglar.
izacus 7y ago
"Huge part"? "You knew"? "99%"? Got any citations number on those observed numbers and any basis to claim it was EU that did it? Or is this just you deciding that EU is bad and then fitting things to your view?
- repolfx 7y ago
  Just go read stories from the UK Eurosceptic press over the decades. They've been digging up stories of EU corruption since forever. The only reason the UK is seen as "weird" by people in other EU states is because the press is ideologically loyal to the EU institutions throughout most of the world and doesn't report on or investigate this stuff. But in the UK they do (to some extent). Even look at this story. The NYT really wanted to go digging for dirt on Orban and Hungarian society in general, Orban being famous mostly for resisting EU integration and resettlement efforts, and being notoriously unpopular in Brussels. But they found they couldn't because the EU lacks even very basic levels of openness. You aren't going to read about EU corruption from them, that's for sure - the fact that they only just noticed this says they've been turning a blind eye for years. For instance, go look at the stories in the UK about farmers being paid to not breed pigs. I'd like to get paid to not breed pigs! I think I'd be good at it!

adlpz 7y ago

Could you point me to any sources where I can read more about this things, e.g. grants on "multi-language communication services" and such? Not meaning to doubt you, but it all seems a little too good (or maybe bad) to be true, doesn't it?

wrnr 7y ago
The 40% is an exaggeration, I got the number of the top of my head. But yes, the Flemish government has a number of these type of programs that pay for all sort of random things. Don't forget that the people administrating these schemes also need to get paid. https://www.vlaio.be/nl/subsidies-financiering/subsidiedatabank/ontwikkeling-en-vertaling-van-digitale-internationale https://www.vlaio.be/nl/subsidies-financiering/subsidiedatab... I've already posted a link for another source in another comment. Edit: This is how to get a refund for voting: https://vlaanderenkiest.be/faq/wanneer-krijgt-u-uw-reiskosten-om-te-gaan-stemmen-terugbetaald https://vlaanderenkiest.be/faq/wanneer-krijgt-u-uw-reiskoste...
- tooop 7y ago
  Voting: how is it an EU thing? Provide a source for EU document because i certainly haven't heard anything like that in my country.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  The 40% is an exaggeration, I got the number of the top of my head. Why did you do that, the facts aren't hard to find and you may well learn something along the way.
- afjl 7y ago
  There's nothing wrong with getting a refund for voting if you have to travel for it. Not refunding this travel could prohibit fairly poor people from voting. The idea is to encourage voter participation by removing the financial obstacle to voting.