The European Parliament doesn’t want you to know what your MEP has earned this year, and how she or he used that money to represent you in Brussels and Strasbourg. Why?
At worst, it’s the potentially embarrassing chronicle of handsomely paid MEPs, siphoning off funds to relatives posing as their assistants, diverting salaries back to their own personal coffers, or doing little more than sitting back in their seats and claiming per diem allowances, travelling back and forth from Brussels to their homes, gratis of course.
This is not the ranting of a Eurosceptic curmudgeon. In 2005 I filed a complaint to the European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, to know what MEPs are earning and how they spent this money in Brussels. Today, the EP is ignoring the Ombudsman’s recommendation to disclose this info and even worse, his moral censure.
And that’s all there is to it, because the Ombudsman has no executive power to enforce his decision. Such is the moral failure of the EP, that the Ombudsman has put it officially on record through a “critical remark” that MaltaToday’s complaint is justifiable, and the EP’s refusal constitutes maladministration.

Pocket-lining
MaltaToday once asked Louis Grech, the Labour MEP, whether he was still taking free Air Malta flights as a former company chairman, and if he also claimed the reimbursement of the flights from the European Parliament. He said he wasn’t.
So why not check his statement with the European Parliament? The EP came back, saying it would not be furnishing us with details of what MEPs are paid, citing data protection. MaltaToday filed a complaint with the Ombudsman.
What really exposed the gluttony of Brussels life however was an internal audit report kept under wraps by the Bureau of senior MEPs, the same that refused MaltaToday access to the MEP payments.
Thanks to the whistleblower MEP Paul Van Buitenen (the same who brought down the Santer Commission in 1999) we learnt of examples of pocket-lining such as paying paying the entire €16,500 a month MEPs get to pay their employees to just one assistant or to an ‘outsourcing company’ that was fully owned by the MEP who received the services.
If this is the sort of internal audit taking place on €140 million of parliamentary assistance payments (10% of the EP budget), it is no wonder that there is ample opportunity for abuse inside the European Parliament.

Transparency
That’s what MaltaToday argued in its complaint. The European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx, agreed: “It seems obvious these data must be disclosed...in a transparent and democratic society, the basic consideration must be that the public has a right to be informed about their behaviour. MEPs must be aware of this public interest.”
But there is a very basic reason why we the voters and taxpayers and contributors to the EU budget should know what an MEP really earns and how his money was spent.
MEPs are paid more than us voters, and less than the lobbysists and multinationals who seek to influence them. When you vote for MEPs, you should know whether their track record was worthy of the salary, funded from the European budget our governments contribute to.
There is no reason why they shouldn’t be paid good wages. Without MEPs, the EU governments and the multinational lobbyists would steamroll over more areas of our public lives.
And if an MEP lives his or he entire life in Brussels inside a Mariott hotel room, there is nothing wrong if the EP is paying the bill for the fresh towels, club sandwiches, and a little mint humbug on the pillow everyday.
But at least, you should have the right of judging what that MEP achieved in Brussels in five years with over €200,000 a year.

mvella@mediatoday.com.mt