The costs of the EU's Galileo satellite system are still skyrocketing

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"Last week brought further embarrassments to the two biggest and most megalomaniac projects the EU has ever undertaken. One was the suspension of its vast carbon trading scheme, the chief component of its drive to fight global warming, after it was discovered that internet hackers had stolen carbon emission permits worth £35 million. .......
Criminal gangs have for some time been targeting the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which forces electricity firms and other large concerns to pay £80 billion a year for the right to continue emitting CO2. In 2009, Europol uncovered a massive VAT racket involving carbon permits which had robbed EU taxpayers of five billion euros in real money, one of the biggest frauds in history. In 2010 it exposed the theft of another half a billion euros in Italy alone, with police investigations still continuing in nine other countries, involving raids on hundreds of offices all over Europe.

What is new about the latest revelations, which have led to the suspension of the ETS for at least a week, is that the criminals have moved on to the electronic theft of millions of the permits themselves. "