By Nicola Smith - 17th December 2003
MEPs on Wednesday voted through an historic deal to clean up their pay and perks regime.
By a majority of 345 to 94, with 88 abstentions, MEPs approved a radical overhaul of pay, expenses and taxation that, if given the final go-ahead by national capitals, could be in place for the 2004 election.
European Parliament President Pat Cox, who was elected to office pledging reform, hailed the result as “a moment of definition and clarification.”
“We have reached a vote today of considerable significance,” he said, but warned that the next phase of negotiations with EU ministers would be delicate.
“It’s not in the bag yet, and I don’t want to presume,” he said, adding, “I would urge the council [of ministers] not to miss the opportunity to settle this issue which has been outstanding for too long.”
“Council must act with urgency so that we can know already in January as we go into an election year that we have done the business, done the reform and we have cleaned up our act,” said Cox.
Dutch Socialist Michiel van Hulten, a leading reformist MEP, described the vote as "an excellent result."
"The turkeys have voted for Christmas. Now it's up to the council to say yes," he said.
The breakthrough on the acrimonious ‘members statute’, which has confounded reformers since the 1960s, came on Tuesday night when the European Parliament’s largest political group – the centre right EPP – accepted a last minute compromise.
However, the EPP only signed up to the deal on condition that the date for its entry into force was dropped.
German Socialist Willi Rothley, the MEP charged with pushing the reform through parliament, said he would do everything within his powers for the entry into force to coincide with the beginning of the new parliamentary term in 2004.
But he argued that politically it had been too difficult to vote on the date without jeopardising all the other issues at stake.
Wednesday's agreement has nevertheless marked a dramatic turnaround after Rothley’s failed attempt to push through changes on taxation, retirement age and immunities in the legal affairs committee.
To break the deadlock between parliament and council, Rothley has pushed through the principle that member states could apply national taxation on top of the low EU tax rate that would otherwise be applied.
At the request of national governments, today’s proposal also upped the retirement age for MEPs to 63 and the issue of immunities will be dealt with separately.
Commenting on the prospects of an early agreement with the council, Rothley said “I don’t think there are now any real obstacles in the way.”
The deal on these three issues should remove the final hurdle to national governments agreement on a common salary for all MEPs.
The parliament agreed earlier this year to a common monthly wage of €8600 – half that of a judge at the European Court of Justice – but this is still to be given a green light by council.
According to Rothley, MEPs would end up with a monthly €7,100, after a €1,500 pension was taken at source.
The move towards a common salary was originally sparked by the need to close the huge gap in salaries between MEPs from different member states.
Currently MEPs earn the same as their national parliamentarians, awarding the highest paid Italian members with almost €12,000 per month, four times the wage of their Spanish counterparts.
The existing expenses regime, often criticised for being untransparent and open to abuse, was originally conceived to make up the difference in salary.
But a sweeping reform of the expenses and allowances system has been linked to any change in MEP wages.
Crafted by parliament chief Pat Cox, the new expenses system would be based on actual costs and backed up by receipts.
Rothley rejected the view that parliament could be accused of awarding itself a pay rise. “MEPs will have less in their pockets than they did before,” he said.
But the question of what regime will be used for MEPs entering the parliament from accession countries in 2004 is yet to be fully resolved.
While the agreement would allow them the same rights as their counterparts from the current member states, a derogation exists for national parliaments to take a separate decision on their salary.
This would avoid the problem of MEPs from
Although conceding that this would lead to major differences between MEPs, Rothley said he did not know how to solve the problem any other way.
“We must leave it up to the member states to decide what they think is right and politically feasible,” he said.
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