Wednesday 15 July 2009

MEPs. The next great scandal?


A reader of Not The Barnet Times has written to Don’t Call Me Dave following an unsuccessful attempt to obtain details of an apparent overpayment of allowances to his MEP.

He received the following reply to his request for information:

Dear Sir,

I refer to your message on the subject of MEP allowances.

Please be advised that the European Parliament does not provide financial details on individual MEPs.

The financial services of the European Parliament verify whether claims are justified and ask for reimbursement when necessary.

We thank you for your interest in the activity of the European Parliament.

Best regards

Gianmarco Addimando
Principal Administrator
European Parliament

Well, that’s OK then because we all know that the EU is very good at looking after taxpayers' money!


Don’t Call Me Dave does not know if there is a European equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act and would be grateful if any readers could enlighten him.

Taxpayers have an absolute right to know how their money is spent and if there has been an overpayment, we are entitled to be told the full details. Have our Lords and Masters in Brussels not taken any notice of the damage inflicted on Westminster by the expenses scandal? Perhaps they are too arrogant to care?

It is interesting to note that the EU official neither confirmed nor denied the suggestion that an overpayment had been made to the MEP in question. If there had been no overpayment, why not just say so?

4 comments:

AdamJacobson said...

Surely, if the MEP is the member for a constituency in the UK, the MEP is covered by the FOI? Adam

Anonymous said...

Never underestimate the power of the Dark Side.......

Don't Call Me Dave said...

Adam

You could argue that either Belgian or French law should apply because of the location of the European Parliament. Or perhaps UK law because the expenses were incurred in the UK.

Or maybe we should all be good children, shut up and stop asking embarrassing questions as to how these numpties spend our money?

Adam said...

Dave, sure you don't need me to point out that there is no such thing as uk law. My view is English law applies to the mep concerned. Adam