Report on MEP expenses to be released

A LONG-HIDDEN report into how several members of the European Parliament managed to earn themselves an extra €1 million during their term is expected to be published thanks to the efforts of an Irish barrister.

Ciarán Toland, who describes himself as a pro-EU activist, said the decision was “a fantastic result” after his three-year battle to have the report made public.

The investigation was carried out by the parliament’s internal auditor, Robert Galvin, in 2008 specifically into a sample of allowances paid to MEPs in 2004-2005. They were entitled to over €200,000 to pay assistants and office expenses.

There were no names in his report, but he gave examples of how 17 MEPs were making obviously fraudulent claims such as for non-existent offices, employing relatives as assistants, paying money into companies they controlled, and pretending to hand over big lump sums to assistants that almost certainly diverted back to them.

One British MEP was investigated by OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud body. It handed the file over to his local police in Britain where he was tried and sentenced to two years in jail. Another British MEP was forced to pay back more than €550,000 he had been paying to a family company.

Despite setting in train widespread reforms to put a stop to the scandal of fraud, the MEPs voted to keep it secret. Even when it was widely leaked in 2009, they resisted efforts to publish it.

Mr Toland, who has dealt with freedom of information issues in his barrister’s practice, applied to the parliament officially for the report. “They refused me on the basis that it was sensitive and could derail the process of reform within the European Parliament.

“As a lawyer I could not accept this because, on this basis, large swathes of documents could be refused.”

Mr Toland took his case to the European Court of Justice and they agreed with his reasoning. The judgment said that the argument about publication of the report undermining the decision-making of the EP “called into question the very principle of transparency intended by the EC treaty”.

He says the court’s ruling establishes new rights of access to a wide range of documents by both citizens and the media, and the public has a right to access internal audit reports which up to now the European Commission and the parliament have refused access.

Parliament vice-president Diana Wallis, who has supported Mr Toland’s case, said she hopes that the presidents will agree to make it public today. The governments of Sweden, Finland and Denmark also supported the case in the court.

Expenses for parliamentary assistants are no longer paid to MEPs, but directly to the assistants and after this term, from 2014, MEPs will no longer be able to employ relatives.

Their expenses must now be receipted — another change brought about by the report and pressure from the media.