The European Commission is demanding an increase in its annual spending of 5.95% - despite the fact most member states are making savage cuts.

The Council of Europe - the EU's Heads of State - wants to limit spending to 2.9% but so far their pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

This being the same organistion whose own accountants have refused to sign-off the books for the last 11 or so years?

Just seems to be a bloated organisation whose members only want to line their own pockets.

Well, as Data might have said, they can all "go to hell"

Sooner we leave this corrupt system the better.

The reason that they refused to sign the accounts has been the lack of internal finance controls. Yes corruption is a problem but not as much as people think.

That doesn't make any sense. If they've never signed off on the accounts we don't know either way whether there is much corruption either way, all we know is that no one has been caught.

The main reason the EU doesn't get its accounts signed off is because Member States don't account for money properly. What usually happens is the EU awards a grant or loan to a Member State and then said Member State doesn't properly account for where the money's gone.

As for potential fraud, that's the very reason we have Olaf: http://ec.europa.eu/anti_fraud/index_en.html