Labour-afgevaardigden in Europees Parlement geven openheid van zaken (en)
As the litany of dubious expense claims made by British MPs grows longer, the country's Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown i, has hit back with new obligations for his party's MEPs in Brussels in an attempt to regain the moral high-ground.
Starting with the new parliament that will sit for the first time next month following the imminent European elections, Labour MEPs will be obliged to publish all receipts for the expenses they claim under an MEP office allowance of more than €50,000 a year.
The Labour delegates in Brussels will also publish details of their travel costs and the number of times they have claimed the daily attendance allowance of €298, in line with proposed measures announced by Britain's Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.
The move on office allowances sets a new precedent for the European legislature, whose MEPs are generally not renowned for their proactive stance on expenses transparency.
As recently as March of this year, almost 70 percent of MEPs voted to limit the amount of information on expense claims and financial disciplinary measures available to the general public.
New rules on transparency for the parliament that will come into effect next month will only require MEPs to produce receipts for travel expenses.
Announcing the new measure on Monday (25 May), Labour's leader in the European Parliament Glenis Willmott said her party was glad to be leading the way forward.
"Labour MEPs are proud to be fighting for hard-working people at local, national and international level, in an open and transparent way. We hope that the other political parties will eventually follow our lead on this," she said.
The main culprits
This call for other parties to follow suit is echoed by UK-based think-tank Open Europe that on Monday published its own league table rating MEPs on their record of promoting transparency and reform in the EU over the last five years.
"They might talk a good game at home, but too many MEPs have voted against transparency and EU reform on a number of occasions," said the group's Research Director, Mats Persson.
The table allocates a score out of a maximum of 58 to the parliament's current 785 MEPs, based on 20 different categories relating to transparency, accountability, democracy, and waste.
MEPs from Sweden and the Netherlands topped the table with average national scores of 37.1 and 34.1 respectively, with Spain and Italy bringing up the rear on 14.0 and 14.7 respectively.
Indeed the table hands considerable ammunition to those who characterise northern Europeans as more honest than their southern counterparts with France, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Spain making up six of the bottom eight performers.
British MEPs rated fourth from the top.
On an individual level, Swedish MEP Carl Schlyter came top of the table with 55 points, followed by Austrian MEP Hans-Peter Martin on 53, while at the other end Italian MEP Roberto Fiore achieved 2 points with Cypriot MEP Ioannis Matsis on 3.
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