You couldn’t make it up. As Cyprus and Greece choke on the self-serving rhetoric of the North, the EU is running out of money. Yep. Because the European Commission proposes to settle only part of the EU’s £16.2bn debt that has been rolled over from 2012, the end of 2013 could see insolvency beckoning the supra-would-be-state.

Last year the Commission, Parliament and Council agreed to settle all bills left over from 2012. However, EU Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski has announced an amending budget of €11.2bn. As a result, there is a €5bn shortfall that will have to be paid from the 2013 budget which, unfortunately, does not cover rolled-over bills.

Thanks to this, the EU could run out of funds before the end of 2013.

When the EU, and the more powerful countries within, are stripping life out of Club Med countries, surely the irony has not been lost on them that a) Commissioners cannot pay their own bills and b) have reneged on a pre-arranged deal?

As Budgets Committee chair Alain Lamassoure said yesterday: "In these times when the EU's credibility is questioned, to pretend to be deciding on a seven-year budget when we are not even able to pay the current year's bills will not enhance our trustworthiness.”

Indeed.