EU Employs More People Than British Army

Sally McNamara / August 11, 2008

In a shocking report by the brilliant British think tank Open Europe, it’s revealed that the European Union employs vastly more people than the British army.

More than 170,000 people now work for the EU institutions, both directly and indirectly, with just 107,000 in the UK army. With masterful deception, the EU has long proclaimed that it employs fewer people than it takes to run a European city council (as was repeated to me just last month by the Finnish Foreign Ministry).

Open Europe undertook a gargantuan effort to lift the lid on Brussels’ Byzantine institutions to reveals the EU’s “army of bureaucrats” and the level of deception they employ to cover it up. The EU’s own court of auditors has been unable to sign off the accounts for 13 straight years now.

If ever there was a time to roll back the European state, then surely it is now.