Time and time again, the name of the EU Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering is mentioned when the issue of tranparency is raised.

And every time, he appears as an obstacle to getting anything done. Yesterday yet another article appeared in the German press in which Hans-Gert emerged as an enemy of transparency.

Van Buitenen criticised the President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering (CDU). “I’m not at all persuaded that things are improving” [referring to Parliament’s plan to change its system for accounting for expenses in 2009]. There have been several meetings with the President, but the fraudulent use of expenses won’t change. Van Buitenen told this newspaper that the head of Parliament is strongly resisting the introduction of transparent accounting.

But let’s not pretend Poettering is the only culprit here, even if he appears as the person who is least willing to change. There are plenty of MEPs hiding behind the President. What’s more, the other institutions such as OLAF and anti-fraud commissioner Siim Kallas are doing very little to encourage change.

The European Parliament’s internal auditors’ report on payment of assistants is still a secret.

But MEP Paul van Buitenen has seen it and provided a summary on his site.

The auditors investigated a sample of payments, and found an extraordinary proportion were either not made according to the rules or were just plain fraudulent.

What will the EU’s anti-fraud office OLAF do about it?

If history is a guide, the people who blew the whistle on this - Paul van Buitenen and Chris Davis - will be disciplined and the report will be buried. The EU has a track record of firing whistleblowers such as Bernard Connolly, Marta Andreasson, and having journalists arrested.

Euractiv wakes up to the auditors’ report on fraudulent payments made to MEPs’ assistants:

“Pressure on parliamentarians is mounting to publicise the payments made to their assistants, after Dutch MEP Paul van Buitenen published a summary of a confidential Committee report on detailing abuses of the current payment system.”

As far as I can tell, this is the first time Euractiv has mentioned the report, which has been known about since 22 February. So much for Euractiv’s claim that it wants to ”promote efficiency and transparency in EU decision-making”.

Also in German here:

“Der Druck auf Parlamentarier steigt, die Zahlungen an ihre Assistenten offen zu legen. Zuvor hatte der niederländische Europaabgeordnete Paul van Buitenen eine Zusammenfassung eines vertraulichen Berichts vorgelegt, der Einzelheiten über den Missbrauch des gegenwärtigen Zahlungssystems enthält”.

And in French here:

“Les parlementaires sont confrontés à une pression grandissante pour publier le détail de la rémunération de leurs assistants, après la publication d’un résumé d’un rapport confidentiel d’une commission parlementaire par l’eurodéputé néerlandais Paul van Buitenen, détaillant les abus du système de paiement actuel”.