“New Exploration York Times”: How oligarchs, Mafia, and populists Get Rich With European Union Money

Each year, the 28-member bloc grants $65 billion in subsidies for agriculture, whose aim is to help farmers across the continent and keep rural communities alive. But according to the findings of the investigation of New York Times journalists, most of this money goes to a handful of people connected to power.

According to the paper, the prime minister of the Czech Republic has obtained tens of millions of dollars in subsidies last year, while subsidies have also gone to agricultural lands that have been robbed by owners, by mobilized means, Slovakia, and Bulgaria.

The irony of fate according to NYT is that the agriculture support programme, which was one of the most important tools for the formation of the European Union, is now being exploited by the same undemocratic forces that threaten Union from within. And this is because governments in Central and Eastern Europe, led by populists, have a strong voice in the way they distribute subsidies that are based on European taxpayers' money.

Journalists of the American daily, after an investigation conducted in nine countries for most of 2019, have exposed a system of subsidies that is deliberately untransparent, harms EU environmental objectives and is wrapped up in corruption.

And why is that? Because the European machine in Brussels allows it because if opposed, it would change a program that helps keep a very fragile union standing, according to the paper. Because European leaders do not really agree on many things, but when it comes to generous subsidies and the secrecy of their distribution, they all agree.

What Was Discovered

• Subventions on agriculture have helped lay the foundations of today's European Union. Today, they help legitimize a kind of modern feudalism, where small farmers are totally dependent on land barons that have political connections.
• The European Union allocates $65 billion to farmers annually. It is the largest amount in the EU budget and one of the largest subsidies programmes in the world.
• At the center of the program is the idea that people should be paid according to the amount of land they work on. The system is supposed to help farmers stabilise Europe's food supply.
• But in the former Soviet bloc countries where the government owns a large quantity of agricultural land, leaders such as Hungary's Viktor Orban have sold agricultural land to political allies and family members at auction. And after land, subsidies come.
• A company formed by former Czech Prime Minister Andrey Babes received at least $42m in subsidies during the past year alone.
• In Bulgaria, subsidies have enriched agrarian elite. The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has found that 75 % of subsidies in the budget end up in the hands of nearly 100 people or enterprises. / world.al

You can read the complete investment of the New York Times here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/03/world/europe/eu-farm-subsidy-hungary.html