"corrupt politicians"... really? Do you have any examples of large scale corruption inside EU? I don't. I think the majority of EU politicians are doing fine.
In return:
Do you have an example of where the EU paid anywhere below 200% of industry standard price for anything?
I'm not arguing its more corrupt than say the US Congress. Its on par, with some weird extremes. For example: Berlusconi, a prime minister, spending public money on under age prostitutes, serving today freely as a member of the EP. That kind also owned most media companies in his country and implemented favourable regulation and tax exemptions for himself.
Here in the Netherlands, there is something referred to as the 'job carousel'. Where favourable regulation by politicians is rewarded in the future (after a political carreer) by very highly paid gigs in the industries and companies they favoured. Technically legal, and very hard to legislate against. Its a refined form of corruption, but it has all the same downsides. During Corona for example, the Netherlands had trouble getting its testing in order. Turned out we had excluded big commercial labs from consideration because we had represenatites of the 'small artisinal labs' in our taskforce lobbying. A small scale corruption, with heavy economic distortion as a result!
I'm also not perse blaming corruption on the politicians themselves. We are all together responsible for the corporate and governance culture we breed. Yet we shouldn't pretend we currently have the ability to spend/invest money effectively and fairly as a collective.
> Turned out we had excluded big commercial labs from consideration because we had represenatites of the 'small artisinal labs' in our taskforce lobbying.
The lobbyist, part of the Outbreak Management Team, is Ann Vossen. And she argued from her experise that there should be specific requirements that effectively kept larger laboratories from being able to be suppliers. Ironically, the trick used was the Tower of Babel (pretending language differences could be a risk)
Nothing that would meet some arbitrary, establishment defined definition of 'corruption.' The fact that the sons and daughters and son-in-laws and daughter-in-laws, extended family and close friends all end up in cushy no-show non-profit chairmanships where they launder corporate donations to family foundations, drive their fleet of foundation owned cars, live in foundation owned mansions and accrue their foundation pensions is the sort of perfectly legal corruption people have in mind. The sentiment appearing here is correct; not a cent of the money invested by the EU in semiconductors will escape the clutches of establishment grandees and instead find its way to anyone that knows how to compete effectively with prevailing foundries, so don't expect to find any European manufactured chips troubling TSMC et al. in this lifetime.
