Early May, a bare old industry building turned meeting place in Brussels. Four large tables, about 20-30 journalists and programmers, all staring on their open labtops. Sometimes they talk, pointing to each others screens, often they just work. Loads of coffee, for lunch there are pretty dry sandwiches.
The journalists share fresh data about the beneficiaries of the € 50+ billion annual EU farmsubsidies. They are digging for stories. And they succeed. The most prominent story this day is the one about a Bulgarian minister granting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Euros in subsidies to his wife and daughter for just that year. Read the rest of this entry »
Brigitte Alfter 