You Give Please Money for my Squeezebox

Agricultural subsidies everywhere are generally misguided. In the EU, the CAP is so far beyond ridicule, that it’s mawkish to even mention them to anyone with a weak stomach.

Other curious beneficiaries include a Swedish accordion club that won €59,585 from the EU farming programme; a Danish billiards club with €31,515; an Estonian school almuni society on €44,884; a Dutch ice-skating club with €162,444; a Dutch amateur football club on €354,567; and the Netherland's Schiphol Airport with €98,864.

I do not believe the funds were intended for the composting of those accordions either. There is, however, a kind of social Nomenclatura style access in these kind of things.

Galina Dimitrova Peicheva-Miteva, the 27-year-old daughter of Dimitar Peichev, Bulgaria's deputy agriculture minister until July 2009, who was responsible for handling EU funds, got €700,000 from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) last year, according to the Danish and British-based pro-transparency NGO Farmsubsidy.org.

Elsewhere in the bucolic idyll of duhistan:

Commenting on the grant for Ms Peicheva-Miteva in Bulgaria, an EU commission official said: "That would be a case for the Bulgarian authorities to look at, or, at a push, [EU anti-fraud agency] Olaf. If she's got a load of land, there may be nothing wrong with it. But it's more a problem of potential conflict of interest for [her father] the junior minister."

You don’t say!?



Галина Димитрова Пейчева-Митева,
Resplendent in shit-kickers and charming traditional farm regalia