MPS from the VVD, the anti-EU PVV
and the orthodox Christian SGP have declined to participate in research to find
out what MEPs do with their monthly tax-free €4,300 expenses allowance,
broadcaster NOS said on Wednesday.
The EU forks out nearly €40m a year to fund
the allowances of the 751 MEPs but last month, the European parliament again
voted not to publish details about expenses claims, despite growing calls for
more transparency.
The research was carried out by an alliance of EU
journalists called TheMepsProject. NOS was part of the investigating team.
Ostensibly, the allowance enables MEPs to maintain an office back home and
employ staff, but the investigation reveals that only 491 of the 751 MEPs actually
maintain an office in their constituencies.
Four of the 26 Dutch MEPs said they
maintained an office in the Netherlands as well as in Brussels. Most others
said they worked from home as their offices in Brussels were so close by.
Receipts
Members of the anti-EU PVV and orthodox Protestant SGP parties
declined to answer the investigators’ survey, NOS said. VVD MPs did not take
part, but the party did say its members follow the EU rules and that the
allowance is treated as a lump sum which does not require receipts.
Anti-corruption organisation Transparency International has long called on MEPs
to come clean about their spending.
‘Most MEPs refuse to show what they are
doing with the taxpayers cash they are given,’ director Anne Scheltema Beduin
told NOS radio. ‘This clearly damages trust in European institutions.’
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