New wave of migrants for UK
Just months after the controversial move to give full European Union membership to Bulgaria and Romania, the European Commission has already begun plotting the next stage of expansion.
A secret deal has been agreed to pump £8billion into some of Europe's poorest countries to enable them to join the EU within the next few years.
The new fund is supposed to help to root out corruption, develop democracy and tackle human rights abuses. But Foreign Office officials fear that most of the cash will end up being channelled into big infrastructure proj ects that are little more than bribes to encourage the countries to join the EU.
Countries set to benefit from the lavish aid programme include Turkey, Albania and Serbia, where wages are far less than those in Britain. Critics fear the deal will spark a fresh w ave of mass immigration to Britain, already struggling to absorb hundreds of thousands of w orkers from Eastern Europe.
Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, said it was wrong to encourage further EU expansion while the fall-out from the last wave of enlargement w as still continuing. "It seems the EU knows no limits to its territorial ambitions to be a superpower, " he said.
"This scheme is nothing less than bribery - w e are being forced to subsidise the next massive wave of immigration. It is a very bad deal for Britain. It is perfectly clear that Romania was not fit to join the EU this year and yet now we are encouraging countries that are even less fit to join up.
"Far from sorting out corruption in these countries, the injection of huge sums of money is going to make corruption worse."
The new EU fund, the Instrument for PreAccession Assistance, is supposed to help countries prepare to join the EU by building democratic institutions. But internal Foreign Office documents show British officials fear that most of the money will go to huge infrastructure projects of the kind that have often been dogged by allegations of corruption.
A briefing note prepared by civil servants for Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett warns: "There is obvious temptation for both host governments and the Commission to channel money into infrastructure projects which absorb cash easily and are relatively easy to contract."
Officials say this would clash with Britain's aim of targeting money from the fund at tackling corruption and human rights abuses. But they warn that the UK will have "little formal influence" over how the cash is spent.
EU enlargement has encouraged massive immigration to Britain in recent years.
An estimated 800,000 Eastern Europeans are thought to have come here since 2004.
New figures this week showed the number of Bulgarians and Romanians heading for our shores has trebled since the countries joined the EU at the start of this year.
The latest deal is all the more surprising because of the human rights records of many of the countries involved.
Turkey, which has a population of 72 million, is singled out by Amnesty International for major violations of human rights.
Albania, which has also been criticised by the international community for its human rights record, is the poorest country in Europe, with gross domestic product per head equal to only eight per cent of the EU average.
Serbia is accused of illegally harbouring war criminals, including the notorious Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who is charged with genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
So-called EU candidate countries such as Croatia, Turkey and Macedonia will be asked to meet the EU's minimum membership standards in return for the cash. But other countries classed as potential candidates for membership will only have to "approximate" to the EU's standards.
The European Commission was asked to comment on the scheme but did not respond.
A statement on the Commission's website said the fund was designed to "support efforts to enhance political, economic and institutional reforms" in the countries concerned.
Sunday Express
30-04-2007
