This afternoon I have taken part in a meeting at the European Union in Strasbourg. at the invitation of Giulietto Chiesa, together with Marco Travaglio and Luigi De Magistris. At this meeting there was discussion of European funding. I’m giving a summary below. In the next few days I’ll publish my video and the video of De Magistris and Travaglio.

“I’ve come here to Strasbourg to ask you for help. To beg the European Community not to provide any more funding to Italy. The money that is arriving from Europe is increasing the metastasis that is devouring our country.
In 2006, Italy got illicit funding from the European Union, then it swindled it for 318,104,000 euro with 1,221 cases denounced. In a single year it has improved its performance by 90 million euro.
We are the top in Europe. First in football. First in fraud. Italy is fraudulent with agricultural funding. It is fraudulent with structural funds for the development of areas that are getting left behind. And I’m just referring to fraud that has been proved.
Billions of Euro arrive every year from the European Community to Italy. Where do they end up? Italian citizens don’t know. To get information they can only turn to the judges. But the judges, when they take action, are always blocked by the Government, by the Parties. So we are always kept in the dark about everything.
The financing from the European Community is our money at the end of the day. Italy participates with other countries to create the common fund that is then redistributed. Money that goes out and that then comes back. A bit like uncontrolled laundering of dirty money. Our taxes are financing the European funding whose use the Italian citizens know nothing about. If it is useful, if it is not useful, what benefits it brings, when it ends.
The Vice President of the Community, Frattini and the Minister of Community Policies, Bonino are very private people. They did not tell Prodi that Barroso had put up 275 million Euro for the integration of the Roma community. Italy didn’t ask for anything, Spain got 52 million and Poland got 8.5 million. Poland? Have the Roma people gone to Poland as well? I thought they were all in Italy. For once when we could have used the funding for a good reason we haven’t asked for it.
And it’s strange. Because even our Regions have opened luxurious community offices in Brussels, that we pay for, to get to the funding. They have more office workers than all the other States.
The billions of Euro that come into Italy are intended for useless work: roundabouts, theme supermarkets, like the TAV tunnel in Val di Susa and Mediapolis in Piedmont. They have financed projects that never arrived at a conclusion, purifiers, alternative energy. They ended up in the pockets of that grey zone that connects the parties to the companies to criminal groupings.
It is better if Italy no longer gives contributions to the common European Fund and in exchange that it has no funding. This money can be used by our government in other ways. To reduce our Public Debt, the biggest in Europe, one of the most impressive in the world.
A Debt that risks taking us under. The money could be used to reduce taxes. To give incentives to companies to invest in Italy instead of encouraging Italian companies to transfer abroad. Or even to reduce the poverty that exists in Italy or increase the starvation pensions of our old folk.
The money laundering of our cash through Brussels is no good for us. It is only useful to fatten up the mafia, to grow criminality in our country.
Also present here is the judge Luigi De Magistris. What has been taken out of the hands of De Magistris is an investigation that involved the top people of the Region of Calabria and of the Italian Government: Mastella, Minister of Justice and Prodi, President of the Council.
The investigation was removed from him by his superiors without a reason. The documents of the investigation have been taken from the strong boxes of the Catanzaro Prosecutors Office without warning him and they have been sent to Rome. The investigation is called Why Not and it also deals with the use of Community funding. In Calabria, they are waiting for five billion euro in European funding. Where will it end up?
The magistracy has been halted by the politicians. Once, in 1992, with Falcone and Borsellino, they used TNT. Now it’s the Minister of Justice who intervenes directly.
European funding is of no use to Italy. It’s useful to the political parties and organised crime. We don’t want it. Please hang onto it. Do this for a better Italy.”

Beppe Grillo