Journalists from EU countries sue the European Parliament for concealing MEP expenses

For the first time in history, journalists from all member states of the European Union have united to file a lawsuit with the European Court of Justice against the European Parliament (EP), which rejected journalists’ requests for access to information on how 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) spend taxpayers’ money.

A team of 29 journalists requested copies of the spending records of representatives from their countries over the last four years (in the case of Croatia, since July 1, 2013, when we joined the EU) as the European public has the right to know how their taxpayers’ money is spent. The requested data included how much money representatives receive in addition to their salaries in the form of various allowances, including general and travel expenses, per diems, and staff costs, but the European Parliament refused to make this data public. The pan-European initiative for free access to information – the MEPs project – was formed in June this year when journalists representing all EU countries requested access from the EP to information on how, when, and why MEPs spend that money.

According to data from the European Parliament, in 2014, 27 percent of the total budget of the Parliament, which amounts to 1.75 billion euros, went to MEP expenses. Annually, this amounts to over 474 million euros for salaries, travel expenses, office costs, and assistants. The European Parliament spends 3.2 million euros each month just on general MEP expenses, which totals nearly 40 million euros annually, and no one monitors these expenses. Meanwhile, MEPs have repeatedly voted against efforts to regulate this issue. In September, the European Parliament rejected all journalists’ requests for access to this information, justifying that they cannot disclose it due to personal data protection. They added that they do not even hold documents related to how representatives spend these allowances. Journalists gathered in this initiative by Anuška Delić, a journalist from the Slovenian Delo, therefore turned to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, represented in court by Nataša Pirc Musar, a Slovenian lawyer and former commissioner for public information, who was once a journalist herself. The lawsuits were filed with the European Court of Justice on November 13.

– By denying access to the requested documents, the European Parliament grants representatives the right to secretly spend public money and gives them complete immunity from public scrutiny of their spending. We argue that the arguments given to journalists as justification for withholding data have no basis in any European regulation – says Pirc Musar.

Journalists gathered in this initiative believe that the European public has the right to know how public funds sourced from taxes are spent, as the European Parliament is a public institution, moreover the only European institution directly elected by European citizens.

– The MEPs project is unprecedented. This is the first known example of broad cooperation among journalists in the EU in the field of freedom of information, especially access to information that we consider to be indisputably public data. MEP allowances should be spent solely for their professional, not personal needs, and therefore should be available to the European public – says Delić.