Friday, May 26, 2006

Why bother?

Why raid for their documents under anti-trust when you just have to read the paper? They’re still virtual state monopolies!

EU antitrust officials have raided around 20 of the biggest European energy firms in six member states, under suspicion of abusing their market position.

France's Gaz de France, Germany's RWE and E.ON, Austria's OMV and Belgium's Fluxys were among those involved in the "surprise inspections" reported by the European Commission on Wednesday (17 May), along with gas companies in Italy and electricity firms in Hungary.

Brussels regulators were trying to find out whether the firms were guilty of "restrictive business practices and/or abuse of a dominant market position," particularly concerning access to pipelines and storage facilities, commission spokesman Jonathan Todd informed.
Further in the scam and PR exercise parading as a nation state, the EU has been paying journalists per diems to follow the (now bebunked due to the blatent crassness of the French exception) legislative traveling circus to Strasbourg:
The program is being criticized by some members of Parliament who have themselves recently come under pressure to give up generous perks.

The funding for journalists can include payment of a first-class round- trip train ticket or an economy-class plane ticket to Strasbourg from any of the 25 EU countries and a daily stipend of €100 to cover hotel, food and entertainment over two days.

About 60 journalists from across the bloc are invited to Strasbourg each month under the program, which is administered by parliamentary offices in EU member states. Media organs that have benefited from the subsidies in the past include RTBF of Belgium, RTE of Ireland, ERT of Greece and ORF of Austria, among dozens of others, EU sources said.

Attempts to contact these organizations for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful
Garsh! I wonder why? Someone alert the media!, rather the ones that aren’t on the payroll to write uncritical pap.
In other words, training scriblers to explain “how I learned to stop worrying, and learned to love the tax”.
Under the deal, member states gave €2 billion of "new money" on top of the €862.4 billion agreed in December, while another €2 billion was shuffled around within the accounts system to raise funds for MEP-favoured policies.

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