Brussels, 20/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - Journalists representing all of the member states have just brought an appeal before the Court of Justice of the EU against the decision of the European Parliament denying them access to information on how MEPs spend their allowances.
What do the members of the European Parliament do with their many allowances (general expenses, travel expenses, daily allowance) which can run to over €30,000 in a single month? This is the question a group of 29 European journalists, who today received the backing of the NGO Transparency International, has been asking since June 2015.
These journalists argue that as this is public information, they should be able to access it under Article 42 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, which stipulates that “any citizen of the Union, and any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a member state, has a right of access to documents of the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union, whatever their medium”.
In September, invoking the principle of the protection of personal data, the Parliament definitively denied them access to this information. As grounds for its refusal, the institution also stressed the absence of archives specifically regarding general fees and the amount of work this would potentially entail for its administration if such access was to be granted for the other documents over the period requested - which covers four years.
The case against this decision was brought before the Court of Justice on 30 November. According to one of the lawyers representing the journalists - the former information commissioner of Slovenia, Natasa Pirc Musar - “by simply denying access to requested documents the European Parliament is effectively granting MEPs the right to secretive public spending”. “We argue that the reasons given to the reporters for denying their request have no basis in any European regulation”, she added, in a press release issued on Friday 20 November. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)