| 'They enjoy significantly higher salaries than their British counterparts' (Patience Wheatcroft in The Times, September 2003).
This is not so. MEPs earn exactly the same salary as members of their national parliament. The current salary for a UK MEP and a backbench MP is £60,277 (November 2006).
This leads to large discrepancies between MEPs from countries where an MP's salary is relatively high (eg Italy) and those where an MP's salary is low (eg some of the new Member States from Eastern Europe).
From 2009, a new MEPs' Statute will take effect, bringing in the same salary for all MEPs - at a rate of 38.5% of the basic salary of a European Court of Justice judge.
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