English: Main meeting room of the European Commission in the Berlaymont building (13th Floor) on 2007 EU open day, tourists trying out Commissioner’s chairs. View from enterance towards far windows. Français : Le bâtiment du Berlaymont, siège de la Commission européenne. Salle de réunion principale. Nederlands: Het Berlaymontgebouw, de zetel van de Europese Commissie. Hoofd vergaderingsruimte binnen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This publication is an example of the European Commission at its best or perhaps its worst depending upon your viewpoint.
The graphical interface shows for example that Poland is the top beneficiary with Billion 86 Euro from the European Structural Investment Funds.
Source: Open Data Portal for the European Structural Investment Funds – European Commission
What the portal fails to explain is why Poland gets the big bucks and the UK , for example, gets just Billion 16 Euro.There are no links provided with explanations, just lots of cutting and dicing from statisticians.
For an explanation of what the European Structural Investment Funds is about we need to look elsewhere. For answers to your questions, try opening this link.
I am a UK national, resident in Cyprus and am pro-Europe (open this link for my political bias). Despite being a trained researcher with a quantitative bias, given this publication, I’m highly suspicious of the European Commission’s process for allocations of these billions of Euros.
As I reflect on this publication, some open questions come readily to mind:
- How can Poland has say ‘no’ to refugees, and ‘yes’ to the investment billions?
- What about Southern Europe that has been savaged by the EU’s draconian austerity policies? Why can’t they get investment funding to kick start growth?
- The UK is currently an outstanding example of economic opportunity and growth, so why does it receive so little?
Are the European Commission’s bureaucrats bonkers?
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
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Dr Alf has clearly identified that the EU uses no objective criteria to decide which member countries get money, the most money or no money at all. He will also have noticed that the EU, since inception, has never had its accounts properly signed off and that the EU budgetary process is riddled with questionable practices.
The one whistleblower, Marta Andreeson a Dutch accountant, was summarily dismissed by Lord Kinnock for speaking up and since that day nobody has dared to step forward.
The UK has always been the “milch cow” of the EU and others like Greece, willing recipients of EU taxpayers money.
Now, for inexplicable reasons Poland gets to feast at EU taxpayers expense more heartily than the Italians or the Spanish.
If the criteria for these allocations of funds was transparent we might be forgiven for thinking there were logic and well-meaning intent behind the decisions. Sadly, there is no transparency or logic, so the assumption has to be that there is either incompetence at work or straightforward corruption or a combination of both.