Archives for October 30th, 2006

Above: Four Slovenian cows grazing in a field. (source)

Here’s a real-life Halloween story for you: Slovenia has ghost cows.

The country also has other phantom animals, but first and foremost ghost cows. And, just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about blurry old stupid fake ghosts, like the ones you see on the internets. I’m talking about internationally recognized ghosts, confirmed by reputable sources like the European Union and the UK’s newspaper of record, the The London Times. In fact, here’s what a recent Times story had to say about the spooky situation:

“[EU] Inspectors found that half the cattle that Slovene farmers said they owned, so qualifying them for special EU cow and beef grants, did not exist. A quarter of their sheep and goats were equally invisible.”

In other words, the whole country is haunted!!! If I was a member of the Slovenian government, I would immediately apply for 55 million euros in EU “ghostbusting funds” to deal with this. I’d also work to set up a multi-million euro “containment unit” in Ljubljana — fully funded by Brussels, of course — to store all the captured phantom livestock.

Seriously, though, I’m quite proud of Slovenian farmers. The way the system is set up, you’d be an idiot NOT to try something like this. As the Times story makes clear, two out of three EU regional projects that were audited contained “material errors.” Last year, Poland’s government simply gave a “warning” to people who “did not apply good farming practices” instead of, say, fining them. And it’s happening everywhere.

In short, the EU is quite probably the world’s largest gravy train — Slovenes should be making as much effort as everyone else to get on board this before it dries out.

Links:

–> New Europeans use imaginary cattle to milk EU subsidies (The Times)

–> Slowenien erschwindelte EU-Gelder mit Geisterkühen (German magazine Spiegel)

(Thanks Damir!)