Nico Semsrott (Greens/EFA), a German MEP, said he felt he was “overpaid” as an MEP and called on his social network followers to come up with “good ideas” for spending some of his budget—within the limits of Parliament’s rules on spending.
On Monday 31 May, he announced that he had used €7,354 from the envelope provided to each MEP by his political group (Budget item 400) to have 1,800 boxes of sanitary products made.
The initiative, called “Tamponboxen”, contributes to the fight against period poverty: the inability to access sanitary products for financial reasons. Nearly 500 million women worldwide, including in the EU, face this problem and the concomitant health, psychological, and social consequences. This is reflected in the success of the initiative.
500 boxes have already been sent out and more than a hundred associations (emergency shelters for women, shelters for homeless people, etc.) have come forward in the day following the publication of the post by the MEP on his social media channels. It is therefore rather unlikely that the 1,800 boxes will be enough.
Limited by the measures governing the spending of parliamentary envelopes, Mr Semsrott’s team therefore assures that it will ask “other MEPs if they wish to spend their Budget 400” in this way and, if necessary, “offer them [its] assistance”. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)