Senior MEPs seek to put positive gloss on damning auditors’ report

Date: 28/05/1998

By Simon Coss

THE European Parliament's most senior politicians are desperately trying to put a positive spin on a damning report which criticises the way MEPs' travel and attendance allowances are paid.

The confidential preliminary report by the European Court of Auditors, the EU's financial watchdog, argues that the current system for paying MEPs' allowances amounts to an invitation to fraud and calls for a "profound overhaul of the regulatory framework" which governs the way payments are made.

Parliament Vice-President David Martin nevertheless insisted this week that the report was an essentially positive document.

"While there is always room for improvement, the Court report broadly accepts that the Parliament has gone through a period of self reform which has made the system fairer, more open and more transparent," he told European Voice.

Sources close to Parliament President José-Maria Gil-Robles were similarly quick to argue that the report was an essentially constructive document. "It is basically positive," said one top official.

The Parliament's bureau, the institution's top coordinating body made up of Gil-Robles, the 14 vice-presidents and five 'quaestors' (business managers), discussed the document at a meeting yesterday (27 May) and were scheduled to reconvene today for further talks on the issue.

However, while the Parliament's top brass sought to put a positive gloss on the report's criticisms, some members were furious at what they see as inertia on the part of the institution's most senior figures in tackling the problems highlighted in the document.

"There is nothing new which has been published here. I absolutely attack the lack of action by the European Parliament up until now," said Belgian MEP Magda Aelvoet, co-president of the institution's Green Group.

The Greens this week condemned the bureau for refusing to release copies of the Court of Auditors' draft findings to all MEPs, even after reports on the document's contents appeared in the German press. The Greens, along with European Radical Alliance and Europe of Nations groups, have no representatives on the bureau.

While the Court's report does not 'name names', it nevertheless lists a whole catalogue of slack administrative procedures which could be easily abused by unscrupulous MEPs. In particular, it criticises the practice of reimbursing parliamentarians' travel costs rather than providing MEPs with advances which must be fully accounted for.

"Most of the allowances are of the lump-sum variety or take the form of annual entitlements with fixed ceilings that are not linked closely enough to actual situations or costs," it states.

"The reimbursement of travel expenses should be envisaged. Where appropriate, this reimbursement could comprise a system of regular advances ... Modern means of payment, such as credit cards, negotiated with carriers, could also make it possible to settle travel invoices directly with the service providers concerned."

The bureau has already taken steps to clamp down on some of the worst abuses of the travel allowance system. Since November 1997, MEPs have had to produce clear evidence of journeys taken, such as train tickets or boarding cards, before being reimbursed.

The Court also criticises the fact that parliamentary rules for employing MEPs' assistants are not in line with the 'financial regulation' which covers accounting practices for the EU institutions. This is because MEPs themselves are currently covered by a mixture of national and EU-level rules.

"The loopholes in the regulatory framework may lead to the inappropriate use of funds," warns the report.

Martin and others say such arguments support the calls they have repeatedly made for Euro-parliamentarians to be covered by a single 'MEPs' statute'.

MEPs clash over how to interpret a European Court of Auditors report on MEPs' travel expenses and attendance allowances.