parliamentary expenses
Westminster bad, Brussels good.
A tale of two parliaments
Brussels
We have had months of lurid stories about our Westminster expenses' scandal. It would appear that about one million pounds should be reclaimed at a cost of about one million pounds, so 'nul points'. Meanwhile,we find that the EU Parliament has recovered almost £3 million from MEPs in wrongly-claimed allowances over the last three years but has refused to disclosed from whom the money has been obtained or how much more has been requested, see here.
Jerzy Buzek, the parliament's president, has written that-
the authorities would not "recklessly expose" MEPs who have been asked to return public funds. "Such delicate and sensitive matters must be treated with the utmost caution – avoiding undue haste that can unnecessarily and unjustly cause irreparable harm to members' reputations."
