The EU pays out €40 million a year for MEPs’ national offices. But an in-depth investigation by journalists at ‘The MEPs Project’ suggests that the money is being misspent.
A series of investigations across the 28 member states found at least 42 cases where MEPs pay rent to national political parties or even to their own personal accounts.
In 249 cases, MEPs either said they have no offices, refused to reveal their addresses, or their location could not otherwise be tracked.
As the European Parliament does not audit the use of these expense payments, there is no documentation available for how the funding is used. And, according to the research, neither the existence of MEPs’ national offices, nor certain conditions of their funding are monitored by the parliament.
In this unprecedented EU-wide collaborative effort, our journalists in every member state looked into the ways in which the 748 current MEPs (three seats are vacant) make use of the general expense payments received from the parliament.
Our reporters requested information from all of the current 748 MEPs and analysed documents from the parliament, land registries and other sources.
So far, just 133 answered what they pay in office rent, while only 53 said that they were willing to share documents on their public spending.
