By Nicola Smith - 19th February 2004
MEPs are netting €44,400 of unaccountable office funds every year, according to a European Parliament report.
The report by Dutch MEP Michiel van Hulten, a leading parliament reformer, throws the spotlight on the monthly €3,700 for which “no justification” is currently required.
And an additional litany of parliament’s shortcomings contained in the document could prove politically embarrassing in an election year where fears of a low turnout have already taken hold.
The €44,400 fund is handed out to MEPs in addition to €12,576 monthly for staff, €262 daily for turning up to work, two taxi journeys a week to the tune of €25, €3,652 each year for work-related travel outside their home country, and generous travel expenses to Brussels which do not need to be backed up by receipts.
And while Van Hulten says he does not necessarily have a problem with the fund itself, he does take issue with the lack of controls on the expenditure.
Billed as an allowance for office rental, computer purchases and telephone costs in MEPs’ constituencies, €900 is deducted automatically each month from the fund if a member signs up to the parliament’s voluntary additional pension fund.
Although the money should be paid back by the MEP, the European Court of Auditors recently criticised the lack of paper trail to prove this actually happens.
And, says Van Hulten, any left over cash from the flat-rate allowance “should at least be taxed.”
The Dutchman’s report picks up most of the parliament’s political “hot potatoes” but the MEP, who is set to bow out at the next election, said he “always expected it to be controversial.”
The document has been tabled in the parliament's budgetary control committee as part of its annual check on the accounts of EU institutions.
While many MEPs on the committee appear to be backing the main points of the report, the real test will come when it goes before the April plenary.
The cost of maintaining the parliament’s three locations in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg when the EU enlarges to 25 will soar from €185 million to €203 million, the report reveals publicly for the first time.
“This represents an unacceptable waste of taxpayers money,” it says in a statement unlikely go down well with French colleagues jealously guarding the parliament's Alsatian second home.
But the issue most likely to rattle parliamentary cages is Van Hulten’s proposed shake-up of the travel expenses regime.
With the spectacular failure of EU governments in January to push through a pay and perks reform package, the MEP moots a shift in focus to reform travel expenses alone.
The much criticised current system, which does not require the provision of receipts, means the difference between what parliament pays and the actual costs “can amount to several tens of thousands of euro per year.”
As MEPs are currently paid the equivalent to their national MPs, a transitional allowance could be used to narrow vast gaps in salary that are currently compensated by the travel regime, the report suggests.
Pro-reformists see the clean-up as vital to improve the parliament's image as the most luxuriant carriage on the gravy train, as canvassing gets underway to lure reluctant voters into the booths in the June European elections.
In 1999 only 50 per cent of Europe’s voters bothered to turn out to the polls, falling below 30 per cent in the UK and the Netherlands.
The most important cause, says Van Hulten, was the parliament’s notoriously negative image, including “a system of expenses more geared to self-enrichment than to reimbursing costs actually incurred.”
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