Europe's Lost Millions

A fascinating investigation on how European financial aid has been embezzled. Travel with us to an unfamiliar land. Europe. A world with its own language, its own customs and secrets. A world whose 150 billion euro annual budget has created magical lands where money flows like water for those who know how to tap it. Like on this Danish island where it hardly ever snows. And yet a farmer here has been granted 200,000 euros worth of subsidies to build a tiny ski resort. Or take this motorway in Calabria in the toe of Italy. The European Union has poured over half a billion euros to fix it, and yet the project is notoriously controlled by the mafia that quite happily pockets tens of millions with impunity. Pierre-Emmanuel Luneau-Daurignac and Olivier Toscer scoured the European continent for several months. They have turned up evidence of four cases that illustrate, sometimes brutally, how money can be misattributed and spending go unchecked by the European Union. From Denmark to the southern tip of Italy, via Normandy and Berlin, this investigative report examines the very top of the European pyramid. At the Commission in Brussels, which is meant to act in the best interests of 500 million Europeans, the two journalists highlight the cases of some former commissioners who succumb to the siren song of the private sector and a potential conflict of interest. And while there is some effort for transparency, the 27 member states still appear reluctant to give up any of their sovereignty.

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