EU bureaucrats outnumber British army two to one

London, Aug.11 (ANI): A study released by the Open Europe think tank, which wants to control the influence and scale of the EU, has found that bureaucrats outnumber the British Army two to one.

According to The Telegraph, 170,000 people now work for European Union institutions.

That means that it is nearly twice as large as the British Army and is greater than the number of people working at eight Whitehall departments, including the Treasury and the Home Office.

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The figure included nearly 45,000 people on 1,000 "expert groups", which advise on legislation, such as the Lifts Directive Working Group, the Mineral Water Expert Group and the Expert Group on Flavourings.

Open Europe also said the figure is nearly six times more than the 32,000 Brussels bureaucrats which EU bosses have traditionally claimed are needed to run the EU.

The Commission has previously claimed that its bureaucratic employees are "fewer than the number of staff employed by a typical medium-sized city council in Europe."

However, the new figure, including EU staff working remotely from Brussels, is more like the entire population of a small city such as Swansea or Portsmouth.

Nick Cosgrove, an analyst at Open Europe, said: "The Commission desperately tries to play down just how many people are now working for the EU. They are extremely secretive about the number of people who are working to churn out regulations.

"These people are not elected, and cannot be held accountable by ordinary citizens. But they have a huge effect on our lives, affecting everything from the price of electricity and food to the way we run the NHS."

"It is a complicated and opaque institution, which leaves it wide open to influence from lobbyists and vested interests," he added. (ANI)