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EUObserver

EU commission called upon to go after corrupt defence deals

VALENTINA POP

Today @ 09:14 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – MEPs and defence experts are calling on the EU commission to go after market-distorting, corrupt side-deals to big weapon deals between member states, such as the ones greasing Germany's submarine sales to Portugal and Greece.

As EU officials are packing their holiday suitcases in Brussels, prosecutors in Germany, Portugal and Greece are on to a hot summer, tracing the complex trails of bribes and side-contracts to the German submarines each of the southern countries signed up for at a price of over €1billion.

The EU hypocrisy of allowing Greek and Portuguese governments allocate huge parts of their budget for questionable defence purchases, while they are being pressed for austerity measures to cap their deficit, already made headlines such as

"The submarine deals that helped sink Greece" in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.

"What's striking about Greece and Portugal is the inappropriateness of these purchases," Nick Witney, a defence expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, a London-based think tank, told EUobserver. "It makes no sense at all to urge austerity and at the same time encourage them to buy weapons. But where there's a nexus of security, secrecy and lack of competition, there is always an open field for corruption," he noted. Click here for more.