Europe's Grand Land Theft

Oligarchs and populists are milking the European Union for millions in farm subsidies

- Selam Gebrekidan, Matt Apuzzo and Benjamin Novak

Under communism, farmers laboured in the fields of Fejér County, west of Budapest, reaping wheat and corn for a government that had stolen their land. Today, their children toil for new overlords, a group of oligarchs and political patrons who have annexed the land through opaque deals with the Hungarian government. They've created a modern twist on a feudal system, giving jobs and aid to the compliant, and punishing the mutinous.

These land barons, as it turns out, are financed and emboldened by the European Union.

Every year, the 27-country bloc pays out 59 billion euros in farm subsidies intended to support farmers and keep rural communities alive. But across Hungary and much of Central and Eastern Europe, the bulk goes to a connected and powerful few. This is because governments in Central and Eastern Europe have wide latitude in how the subsidies, funded by taxpayers across Europe, are distributed.

A New York Times investigation in nine countries, uncovered a subsidy system that's deliberately opaque, undermines the EU’s environmental goals and is warped by corruption and self-dealing. Europe’s machinery in Brussels enables this corruption because confronting it would mean changing a programme that helps hold a precarious union together. European leaders disagree about many things, but they all count on generous subsidies and wide discretion in spending them. Bucking that system to rein in abuses would disrupt political and economic fortunes across the continent.

This is why, instead of rooting out corruption or tightening controls, lawmakers are moving to give leaders more authority on spending—over the objections of internal auditors.