Europe

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In a unique act of diplomacy, Italy's government has settled the restaurant bill of four Italian tourists in Albania who left without paying.

The dine and dash in the city of Berat made headlines in both countries.

The chatter prompted Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama to raise it with his Italian counterpart, Giorgia Meloni, while she was visiting the country.

She responded by telling her ambassador to "go and pay the bill for these idiots," he told La Stampa newspaper.

Italy's embassy in Albania confirmed in a statement that it had paid the bill, reportedly around €80 (£68), on behalf of its citizens.

"The Italians respect the rules and pay off their debts and we hope that episodes of this kind will not happen again," it said.

Italy's agriculture minister and Ms Meloni's brother-in-law, Francesco Lollobrigida, was also on the trip to Albania and told the Reuters news agency that paying the bill was a matter of pride.

"A few dishonest individuals cannot embarrass a nation of decent people," he said.

It is unclear when the incident happened but security video of the group walking out of the restaurant and wandering into the night has gone viral on social media.

The restaurant owner told Albania's Report TV that it was the first time customers had left his establishment without paying and said the four Italians had even complimented the food.

archived: https://archive.ph/sWZBB

One of the main reasons for the disparity is the lower taxes that the aviation industry benefits from.

If you fly from Paris to Barcelona the airline not only pays no VAT, but is also exempt from kerosene tax. If you make the same journey by train, the rail company will pay an energy tax and passenger VAT. This means higher costs for the company which are usually reflected in ticket prices.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/7Zrur

The EU's anti-fraud watchdog found irregularities worth €1.77 billion in 2022 as the number of cases it investigated increased, it said in a report published Thursday.

OLAF, which monitors the abuse of EU funds, said there were 12,455 cases reported by authorities last year, a 7 percent increase from 2021.

The majority of these, 11,316 ― an all-time high — were not criminal but concerned irregularities such as poor management, sloppy record-keeping or insufficient financial controls. It represented an 8 percent increase on the previous year.

The remaining 1,139 cases — a 2 percent increase year-on-year — concerned various types of fraud including collusion, manipulation of procurement procedures, conflicts of interest, inflated invoices, evasion of customs duties, smuggling and counterfeiting.

While the number of cases has gone up, the amount of money concerned represents a 13 percent drop from 2021, which is down to "a limited number of individual cases with high financial impact," the report said.

Over the course of last year, OLAF closed 256 cases, concerning €625 million of EU funds either recovered or prevented from being misspent. It also started 192 investigations.

EPPO, the European Public Prosecutor Office, in charge of prosecuting crimes against the financial interests of the EU, launched 865 investigations relating to estimated damages of €9.9 billion.

"Today’s report shows that in 2022, in a context of an increasing numbers of transactions, the EU and its member states continued to step up their efforts to protect EU taxpayers’ money," EU Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn said.

EU has apparently decided to directly hire American officials for top EU jobs. Worse, this is a person who'd be tasked to regulate US companies she's herself worked for!

However, except for France, everyone seems to find this normal 🤷‍♂️