Opnieuw geen akkoord over hervorming onkostenregeling europarlementariërs (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Senior MEPs failed on Tuesday (13 July) to agree to reform their opaque expenses scheme, deferring the matter to the new EU parliament which meets for its first session next week.

The so-called "Bureau" of the outgoing EU parliament, made up of the President and Vice-Presidents, met to discuss the reform of the current system after previous attempts to resolve the issue before the June elections failed.

Currently MEPs get a lump sum each time they travel to Brussels or Strasbourg, irrespective of the actual cost of the ticket, so deputies can claim full business fares even if they travelled on a low-cost airline.

But, at their meeting on Tuesday, the majority of MEPs present considered that it was "too late in the life of this parliament" to try to reform their benefits system and instead postponed the whole issue to the newly elected House, a European parliament source told the EUobserver.

Unequal pay

At the moment, MEPs get paid the same amount as national parliamentarians, which means that while Italians get around 12,000 euro a month, Spanish MEPs earn only 2,500 euro while colleagues from the new member states get an average of 800 euro a month.

This system has therefore allowed MEPs to inflate their pay.

Attempts to give MEPs a set salary of over 8,600 per month and reform the allowance system failed earlier this year due to lack of agreement between member states.

But a report adopted by the European Parliament last April called for the reform of the expenses systems - independent of salary reform - so that reimbursement of travel expenses would be on the basis of actual costs incurred.

MEP statute

The outgoing President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, on Tuesday evening said that parliamentary reform is "an unfulfilled if cherished part" of his term in office, and urged the next European Parliament president to take up this issue again with the Council.

"The time for reform is now. It should not be unduly postponed", said Mr Cox.

"We have broadly speaking a package which although it did not succeed earlier this year, I did not place it in the dustbin. I put it in the deep-freeze and I would commend to whoever should be the president next week, to put it in the microwave and serve it up again to the Council".