In the Telegraph, Bruno Waterfield highlights an article in Stern discussing the ongoing controversy about fraudulent use of expenses in the European Parliament.
This time, it’s Hans-Martin Tillack complaining. He’s the reporter who the EU’s anti-fraud office had arrested by Belgian police for exposing fraud. Sadly Tillack is now on the Berlin beat, and is unable to give the issue much of his time.
However, he does note that MEPs have been unable to account for 76 million euros in expenses from the years 2004 and 2005. Receipts for a further 40 million euros were received but not accepted as valid. Only 45 million euros have been properly accounted for.
Bruno Waterfield reports that Parliament’s President Hans-Gert Pöttering gave a press conference yesterday, and tried to wave away the problem.
In his first major press conference, at a Brussels summit, since the scandal and secrecy surrounding misuse of allowances broke, Mr Pöttering relied on tried and tested European Union cultural relativism to get himself off the hook.
Asked why the Parliament did not clean up its act, the institution’s President claimed that in the EU one man’s expense scam could be another man’s legitimate claim on allowances. It’s a cultural thing, don’t you know?