Something's rotten in Brussels

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has come up with a blinder in this morning’s Daily Telegraph, with a piece in the business section that should have been on the front page.

Under the heading, "EC's 'sordid accounting' damned in email from top auditor", Ambrose reports that the EU commission has a "chronically sordid" accounting system and is still unable to keep track of the EU's £73 billion budget after a decade of financial scandals.

This is according to "a top EU insider", the former director-general of the commission's Internal Audit Service, Jules Muis, who retired last year after attempting to spearhead the EU's reform drive.

In an internal e-mail, he paints "an ugly picture of an autocratic body with an 'incestuous esprit de corps' that uses its bureaucratic muscle to 'trash' any official who dares to question its methods."

Ambrose's full story can be read on the web from the link above. In the meantime, we have obtained a full copy of the e-mail, which runs to 11 pages of A4. We will be posting long extracts shortly, with a full analysis.

Incidentally, please bear with us. Blogger is undergoing severe technical problems which is making posting very difficult, on top of which I am having great difficulty accessing the internet.