An added cost to the Lisbon treaty

From the Telegraph-the whole thing.

MEPs are to receive an increase to their staff allowance that will see it climb to £220,000 a year to help them implement the EU Lisbon Treaty.

The European Parliament was forced to clean up the rules over the payment of staffing expenses last February following press exposure of MEPs misusing or abusing the allowance.

Despite the high-profile scandals, an internal document seen by The Daily Telegraph has proposed a nine per cent increase in the parliamentary assistance allowance "following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty".

"With more power comes more work," said a parliament official.

Marta Andreasen, a UKIP MEP and member of the European Parliament's budgetary control committee, said: "It is disgraceful that MEPs have just awarded themselves an extra 1,500 Euros per month. When the political class is held in such contempt to be awarding themselves extra money is incomprehensible."

MEPs can use the extra cash to employ extra staff or increase the salaries of existing assistants. The increase, which comes at a time of swingeing cutbacks and austerity in national public sectors, will take the annual allowance to £203,000 in 2010.

The Daily Telegraph understands that staff expenses will be further increased by another £16,000 in 2011, taking the total annual allowance to almost £220,000.

At least 17 British MEPs - including European Labour, Conservative and UKIP leaders - who returned to the parliament following elections last June use a loophole, known as la clause anglaise, to pay close relations, including wives and children, from the allowances.

The boost to staffing payments, already regarded as lavish by most outsiders, will come on top of a proposed recession-busting pay increase taking the annual salary of an MEP to almost £86,000.

Negotiations on the 3.7 per cent pay rise for all European civil servants, as well as MEPs, ended in deadlock yesterday after 10 EU member states, including Britain, expressed opposition to the legally binding wage increase.

Senior MEPs and the parliament's president have lobbied hard to insist that governments "must respect the law" as regards the indexed EU salary calculation.

Trade unions representing EU staff have threatened strike action and expensive legal action to uphold the pay rise.

A British diplomat said: "The proposed pay increase is seriously out of step with the current economic and financial situation and is not in keeping with the situation facing millions of other employees across the EU who have faced pay cuts or even lost their jobs this year. We had hoped that Community officials would recognise this."

As well as staff allowances, MEPs receive a "general expenditure allowance" worth over £44,000 without having to provide any receipts. While working in Brussels or Strasbourg, MEPs pocket a £265 cash subsistence payment, worth over £40,000 tax-free every year.

What recession?


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