From Russia Today: rt.com 21 October 2010 - Marta Andreasen, a member of the European parliament and former Chief Accountant to the European commission, thinks the EU needs to come down to earth and not try to satisfy their ambitions when some of the member states have been so badly hit by the economic crisis. "They justify the increase by saying that they acquired new competencies because of the new treaty. Well, people were not consulted, at least in the UK, about the ratification of the Lisbon treaty. And now they are called to pay the price of this ratification... Much of the money is going to finance these new competencies... and we don't need the parliament to acquire more powers and competencies when it has not done a good job in performing the competencies that it had before," she said.