2 December 2010

I can reveal that last week, whilst MEPs were in Strasbourg, a delegation from the European Commission paid a visit to London for hush-hush high level discussions with the British government concerning the perilous state of the Euro!
The same week, on Thursday, the heads of the Commission's Directorates were given orders not to discuss the Euro, or to speculate on its future, under any circumstances.
Just how bad is the economic crisis in the EU? Worse than the Commission would have us believe, it would appear. In the last hour it has been announced that three member states have had to apply for aid in order to deal with rising unemployment.
EU adjustment Fund aid worth more than €8.7 million for workers in Spain, Poland and the Netherlands was approved by Parliament's Budgets Committee this morning.
In total, 2,312 redundant workers (retail trade, car and construction sectors) in Spain, 779 former workers in the car and ship building industry in Poland and 613 ex-employees in the ICT sector in the Netherlands are set to receive support.
The Spanish authorities applied for aid to unemployed workers in three regions: Valencia (several firms in the construction and textile sector), Catalonia (the Lear company, producing electrical equipment for cars) and Aragón (several firms in the retail trade sector).
The two Polish applications concern the Wielkopolskie province (two firms in the car industry) and the H.Cegielski-Poznan´ company, the only Polish manufacturer of marine engines, plus its suppliers.
The Dutch application is for two ICT companies, Getronics and HP, in the region of Noord Holland.