Forgive my long absence. Welcome back to Undercover Eurocrat!
This week in Strasbourg, the big story of the week was MEPs voting overwhelming to restrict the annual bonuses bankers receive to 100% of their salary, (or 200% with shareholder approval).
That’s right everyone, you read it correctly. 100% of their salary. A ration of 2:1. In the simplest language possible, bankers can now only receive a maximum of their entire yearly salary as a bonus, on top normal remuneration.
Cry me a river. And in fact, the notorious MEP Dan Hannan did. The Conservative British politician who infamously slated the NHS on Fox News in the US; voted against the proposals.
He claims bonuses should be kept because they are the only performance-related payment bankers receive to keep them in check. But the lure of huge bonuses are what caused bankers to take such high risks with other peoples’ (now the government’s and hence your taxes) money in the first place.
A culture which says it is wrong to limit a financial reward for doing your job to just double your salary, is a culture that is wrong.
But this is not the main problem with the proposal. As has been rightly pointed out, there is nothing in the report to prevent banks jacking up the salaries of their employees to increase the value of the bonus cap – so bankers can easily get around this. Again, as I said just now, any civil society which needs to take this analysis into consideration has a morally broken financial system running the show.
In other big issue news, reforms to the EU carbon trading scheme were rejected by just 19 votes. No prizes for guessing the party of the 21 crucial swing votes.
But the baffling thing about this rabid anti-EU track that euro-Tories are on is that they voted against their own government’s position on the carbon trading scheme. David Cameron is fully supportive of this report which is seeking to stop the downward spiralling price of carbon credits caused by oversupply, which is making the trading scheme useless. Moments after the vote rejection, the carbon price took another blow on the market – making it cheaper for companies across Europe to pollute. A victory for plucky Britain against the insidious EU-superstate wouldn’t you say?
l’UE
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