EU refuses to reveal MEPS’ expenses over ‘privacy rights’

EU judges have refused to shed light on the European Parliament’s notoriously secretive system of expenses and claimed that doing so would infringe MEPS’ right to privacy.

The £3,937-a-month general expenditure allowance is paid directly into every MEP’S account on top of their monthly salary to cover hotels, travel and restaurant bills.

But there is no need to provide receipts or return unspent cash from the payment, which costs EU taxpayers an estimated £35.8million a year.

The general court, a lower chamber of the European Court of Justice, yesterday rejected a case brought by journalists over the allowance.

Judges in Luxembourg said making details public would violate MEPS’ privacy. The court also refused to allow the information to be handed over in a redacted format to avoid EU data protection rules. It said that would prove too burdensome on the parliament and render the request pointless because it would be impossible to monitor individual MEPS’ expenditure.

The consortium of investigative journalists found abuses of the system in 2017, including payments to MEPS’ personal accounts. In many cases, it was impossible to find out how money was spent as there was no paper trail.

Transparency International, a global NGO leading the fight against corruption, called it a “severe blow to transparency at a time when trust in the EU institutions is so low”.

Ashley Fox, the Conservative MEPS’ leader, said that their MEPS had submitted their expenses for independent audit and published summaries of them for the last nine years.