Hotels, jets and limos: How Eurocrats spend £28m of your money
EUROCRATS have lavished tens of millions of pounds on expenses and other perks, including trips to luxury resorts, expensive meals and flights by private jet.
In a dossier published today, the Vote Leave group claims the ‘exorbitant’ expenditure by EU officials also includes Caribbean cruises, thousands of pounds of alcohol and chocolate and team-building days.
The figures were culled from the European Commission’s own website, which lists so-called ‘discretionary spending’. In 2014, the total bill was 35,376,819 euros (£28 million). Pro-Brexit campaigners said the findings showed how eurocrats were able to live a ‘life of luxury’ at our expense.
Vote Leave said some of the ‘worst examples’ include 439,341 euros (£349,000) on Luxaviation – a private jet provider which offers a choice of 250 aircraft, wines from their own extensive cellar, on-board culinary facilities and uniformed hostesses.
A further £176,700 went on luxury hotels, including £43,400 at the five-star Stamford Hotel in Brisbane and £17,600 at the fivestar Shangri La Hotel in Singapore, which offers ‘signature’ massages at its Chi Massage Spa.
Officials from the EC departments responsible for the ‘Environment’ spent £12,300 on resorts including £6,500 on the Alpine Gangwon-Do Resort in South Korea and its ‘composite tourism complex’ which features artificial alpine lakes.
EU spin doctors and researchers lavished £18,800 on chauffeur taxi services including Don Williams Chauffeur Services, an elite and ‘pet friendly’ chauffeur service, which operate Range Rovers and Mercedes V and S-class vehicles.
The spin doctors also spent £2,740 at Brambles, a corporate event caterers, who are ‘proud of their hand-produced artisan food’ and provide ‘mixologists’ at events to make cocktails.
Cabinet minister Priti Patel said: ‘This is how EU officials are spending your money. The complete lack of transparency in the EU means that eurocrats think they can get away with living the high life at our expense. They have tried to hide this spending for years.
‘Most families have been hit hard since the financial crisis, having to tighten their belts to make ends meet. But EU officials are using our money to fund their jollies and exorbitant expense claims.’
About 55,000 people work for the European Union, including 33,000 in the European Commission, which is effectively the EU’s civil service. Staffing levels grew by 60 per cent in the decade from 2000.
The total cost of EU administrative expenditure, including salaries, is £6.8 billion a year. The salaries are boosted by special low tax rates and generous perks.
More than 80 per cent of EU officials get a 16 per cent salary top-up, known as a repatriation allowance, which supposedly compensates them for having to live in Brussels or Luxembourg.
Commission president JeanClaude Juncker is on £235,000, having been granted a rise of £8,300 this year. He also receives a residential allowance of £35,000, plus expenses of £12,500.
The spending is in addition to the vast sums lavished on MEPs. Their basic salary is £78,200 a year and they enjoy a special low European so- called ‘community tax rate’ of just 23 per cent.
MEPs also receive lucrative allowances on top of this, including a general expenditure allowance of £3,412 per month or £41,000 a year, supposedly to cover such items the costs of phones, computer mainte- nance and postage. There is also a daily flat-rate allowance of £240, simply for attending the Parliament in Brussels or Luxembourg, as well as generous travel allowances, including first- class rail and business class air fares.
A spokesman for the commission said: ‘Some of these claims are simply absurd, some inaccurate. EU officials travel for work – the vast majority of the time in economy class and bound by strict rules. They have to pay up-front and are only reimbursed afterwards – if those strict rules allow it.
‘Only the president and commissioners have permission to use rented private planes and it is the exception rather than the rule for use when scheduled air travel would be more expensive or does not allow them to meet the itineraries they need to meet.
‘The president and his delegation of 17 people stayed in the Stamford Hotel for the G20 in Brisbane as this was the hotel designated by the G20 organisers, the government of Australia.’
‘Using our money to fund their jollies’