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- Just sign in and start trousering the money, said The Sun shortly after the June 2004 elections (22 July 2004). "When all the extra allowances, fiddles, salaries and the cost of luxuries like EC limos and fancy restaurants are added in, the package is reckoned to cost taxpayers a mind-boggling £1.9BILLION -or £2.4million for EACH member."
- Each MEP is estimated to cost taxpayers £2.4m. 'Some' of the cost is in travel and translation but 'a great deal' pays for chauffeurs and 'other unnecessary expenditure'. The book suggests that if we 'arbitrarily' cut the cost of each British MEP to £1m a year, this would save £109m (Bumper Book of Government Waste, 2006).
The Sun's journalist 'reckoned' the cost at £2.4m per MEP, but he or she apparently plucked the figures out of thin air - and the danger of such figures appearing in print is that they are liable to be reproduced and quoted by others as we can see from the Bumper Book of Government Waste where they simply 'estimate' without saying who estimated on the basis of what figures.
Actually the total European Parliament budget for 2005 was €1.18bn - this includes costs of translation, travel to and from Strasbourg/ Brussels/Luxembourg, MEP offices and expenses, staff salaries and European Parliament political group funding. It does not include MEPs' salaries, which are paid nationally.
Even if you go through the meaningless calculation of dividing the total European Parliament budget (€1.18bn in 2005) by 732 MEPs, you reach €1.612m or £1.110m per MEP. Adding the £59,000 a year salary of a UK MEP (paid in the UK), this brings the total cost per member to around £1.17m - less than half what the Sun 'reckons'. Perhaps The Sun got the Euro/Pound conversion rates the wrong way round?
Why is the calculation meaningless anyway? Because fixed costs make up the bulk of the European Parliament's budget. The costs of buildings and translation/ interpretation into 20 working languages are not affected by how many Members there are. Some 57% of the total EP budget is spent on translation/interpretation and the cost of moving between Brussels and Strasbourg/Luxembourg.
Finally, even quoting £1m per member is not a fair comparison to make with the costs of the House of Commons as the European Parliament works in 20 languages, its members commute from 25 countries and it is forced to move between Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg (see below). A better comparison would be with the US Congress in terms of geographical area covered; and Congress does not work in 20 languages. |