Author of spending report ‘muzzled’ by Parliament

MEP preparing report on the Parliament’s spending says the centre-right is trying to water down criticism.

An MEP who has prepared a critical report on how the European Parliament spends taxpayers’ money says that he is now being muzzled by the Parliament’s leadership.

Bart Staes, a Belgian Green MEP, says that his criticism of the Parliament’s spending of €1.4 billion in 2008 risks being watered down.

He has called for better internal auditing, better hiring practices and more transparency, and criticised the practices of the Parliament’s secretariat and Klaus Welle, the secretary-general.

This week, Ingeborg Grässle, a German centre-right MEP, put down 50 amendments to the report, saying that the changes were necessary because Staes’s report was exaggerated and had “nothing to do with reality in the Parliament”.

Staes responded: “I am amazed. She has always been very critical, and rightly so, of the European Commission and OLAF [on spending and fraud], but here we have a report meant to question our own house and now we face this sort of reaction.”

Grässle accused Staes of trying to create an image of a corrupt Parliament that simply does not exist. “We have to be critical, yes, but he gives the impression that nothing works. This is not the reality,” she said. “I told him ‘you have plenty of conflicts there that we do not need’.”

Staes said he believed that Grässle was acting as a proxy for Welle, who, like Grässle, is a German Christian Democrat. He used to be the secretary-general of the centre-right European People’s Party group of which Grässle is a member. Grässle said that she “spoke for herself”, adding that “the current secretary-general was not even secretary-general in 2008”.

MEPs have filed 200 amendements to Staes’s 31-page report, which makes public embarrassing details over how money is being spent by the Parliament.

But Staes said that Grässle’s amendments were the only ones that attempted to water down criticism. Other parties had not submitted changes that alter the level of self-criticism, he said.

“This is the problem in this house, it’s too political. The officials are not independent,” said Staes. “If Grässle and the secretary-general get their way, then it will show the Parliament as hypocritical and undermine the whole process [of transparency].”

Grässle said she was confident that her proposed changes would get enough support in the committee that is to discuss them next month.

“If this report passes as it is, it would be a problem. We have transparent procedures,” she said.

Christofer Fjellner, a Swedish centre-right MEP, said Grässle had gone “a little over the top” with her amendments. Fjellner said that Staes was right to set out a list of questionable spending practices. He said proper internal budgetary controls already existed, but that co-ordination between committees and the Parliament’s bureau should be improved. “There we have to do a lot more,” said Fjellner.

The report questions the costs of the Parliament’s web-TV service and of its new offices in London. It also criticises a €80,000 fund for Parliament staff, used to pay for language courses and ski trips for employees’ children.

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