Jacques chirac, France's president, is clearly not a man who worries too much about the price of vegetables. This month an investigating magistrate in Paris announced an inquiry into how Mr Chirac and his wife managed to spend over EUD 2.1m on groceries from 1987-95, during his long spell as mayor of Paris before he became head of state. Newspapers calculate that he and his wife Bernadette munched up fruit and vegetables worth up to EUD 150 ($177) a day, despite having an entirely separate budget for entertainment. Auditors think something smells a bit off. They say that in several instances receipts have plainly been falsified. In one case, a bill of FFr5,000 (then worth $1,000) for foie gras is said to have been doctored by someone to FFr15,000, by adding the figure one at a later date. Given his own rather cavalier attitude to the cost of food, it is perhaps unsurprising that Mr Chirac is unmoved by pleas to reform the European Union's notorious common agricultural policy (CAP). Why should the fact that the CAP adds EUD 600 a year to the food bills of the average European family weigh heavily with a man who can eat his way through that amount, in fruit and veg alone, in just four days?
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