September 25, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
To highlight preposterous examples of waste and malfeasance, I have three ongoing series:
- Great moments in state government
- Great moments in local government
- Great moments in foreign government
Today, I have to create a new category. Because we’re going to cite an absurd example of lunacy by the European Commission. So our new series will be Great Moments in Supranational Governance. It involves Greece and agriculture subsidies, so you can automatically assume spectacular corruption and graft. And you’d be right. Here are some excerpts from an exposé by Nick Squires for the U.K.-based Telegraph.
Greek farmers claimed to be growing bananas on the slopes of snow-covered mountains as part of a massive fraud costing the European Union tens of millions of euros. …The most creative scams included claiming subsidies for phantom flocks of sheep and goats, as well as for non-existent banana plantations on 9,570ft-high Mount Olympus, which is covered in snow for much of the year. …Landowners claimed subsidies for olive groves in a high-security military airport and for pastureland that extended into the sea. …
Government officials were allegedly complicit in the massive fraud, which has claimed the scalps of four ministers. The motivation appeared to have been securing votes in return for turning a blind eye to, or colluding in, the theft of EU funds. …In some cases, farmers claimed money for land and livestock that they did not own, while other cases involved people with no links to farming cashing in on the EU subsidies. …Police scrutinised more than 6,000 out of 800,000 applications and discovered that hundreds of farmers had misappropriated EU subsidies.
In other words, these amazing but disgusting examples of fraud were uncovered after investigating less than 1/10th of 1 percent of potential cases. So imagine how much more fraud actually exists? And I’m sure that similar types of fraud exist in other European Union nations.
Sadly, American taxpayers also get raped and pillaged by agriculture subsidies, with some of the worst examples being sugar (see here and here), milk (see here and here), and corn (see here, here, and here).
The only country that I know of with a sensible laissez-faire approach is New Zealand. They eliminated all their subsidies decades ago and now have have a thriving industry.
The European Union should do the same thing, as should the United States (meaning the Department of Agriculture should be abolished, as quickly as possible).
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