The European Parliament is currently sitting, and this week is chiefly concerned with the 2006 budget discharge.
Troublemaking MEPs have also kept alive the issue of fraud in Parliament, and specifically the misuse of expenses, but it’s clear there’s continued resistance to doing anything about it. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, and MEPs don’t vote for transparency.
Here’s Chris Davies:
The European Parliament today voted against the publication of a report by its auditors which has revealed widespread abuse by MEPs of funds intended to be used for the payment of their staff.
MEPs in Strasbourg strengthened their secretive posture by rejecting proposals for auditors’ reports to be made public as a matter of principle.
They also rejected calls backed by the Parliamentary Ombudsman for the names of the 407 members of the Voluntary Pension Fund to be made public.
The Parliament pays €27,720 each year into the pension fund of the members concerned, and they are supposed to make a private contribution of a further €13,860 each year.
However, it is believed that a significant number of MEPs pay their personal contributions from money allocated for their parliamentary duties - a practice described as “embezzlement” by whistleblower UK MEP Chris Davies.
I’ll be rounding up the various budgetary problems Parliament’s been dealing with, or rather not dealing with, and providing summary posts. However, I need to understand them myself first, and this isn’t helped by the fact that the Parliament’s website isn’t working properly at the moment.