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Van Rompuy’s “Jewel Box” is Cameron’s “Gilded Cage”

You’ll recall the “House of European History,” an EU creation dedicated to truncating Europe’s past.  Despite receiving substantial criticism for this narcissistic edifice, the EU has decided to erect yet another monument to its vanity:  The “Europa” building.  This egg-shaped complex will house the European Council and future EU summits.

Already under construction, the Europa is expected to cost European taxpayers £270 million ($430 million).  Council President Herman Van Rompuy broke this news at a dinner with European leaders Thursday night, when he passed around a glossy 14 page brochure celebrating the 27,000 square meter complex that will house his presidential offices. The brochure itself, cost taxpayers £100,000 to print ($160,000).

British Prime Minister David Cameron was not amused.  At a post-summit press briefing Cameron laid into the project for which British taxpayers are forking over £25 million, or $40 million:

When you see a document being circulated with a great glossy brochure about some great new building for the European Council to sit in, it is immensely frustrating….You wonder whether these institutions actually get what every country and what every member of the public is having to go through as we cut budgets and try to make our finances add up.

The current home of EU summits is the Justus Lipsius building.  It is perfectly adequate to meet the needs of the Council, but fans of the Europa claim it’s just too cramped and drab to do justice to the growing, 27-member Union.  Van Rompuy’s office refused to accept any responsibility for the building’s cost, stating that the project “was decided years ago, before the crisis… It will cost more now to cancel than to complete.”  As construction is halfway finished and the final product is expected to be usable by 2014, canceling the project is not an option.

As reports of EU extravagance continue to erupt, it’s impossible to take EU calls for fiscal discipline seriously.  Cameron points out this hypocrisy stating,

People across Europe do understand the need for countries to live within their means…I do think it’s important as we do that where it’s at the national level or the European level, that the politicians aren’t sitting in some gilded cage asking everyone else to take responsibility.

Van Rompuy’s recent display of EU excess shows how out of touch Brussels’ Eurocrats are with national governments as the latter struggle to recover from financial woes.

If the EU expects member states to tighten their belts, they ought to consider slashing their own expenditures first.

 

Author

Morgan Roach

Morgan Roach is a Research Associate in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom and the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. She currently works on transatlantic relations, Middle Eastern and African affairs. She received her MSc. in European Studies from the London School of Economics and her B.A. in Government from Sweet Briar College.