Brussels, 03/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - In a press release, the European Parliament's Assistants Association (EPAA) has slammed the attitude of MEPs for not respecting their commitments to their assistants. The EPAA wonders how long MEPs will carry on treating their assistants with contempt and play games with the European Union taxpayers' money. The Association points out that back in 1998, the European Court of Auditors had voiced serious criticism of the lack of transparency in the use of the secretarial allowances (granted to MEPs for them to pay their staff) by MEPs. On 10 April 2000, the EP's Bureau revised Article 14 (covering these allowances) to require MEPs to provide the Parliament's ruling body with a copy of their assistants' contracts and for the EP to draw up a list of names, accessible to the public, of all the assistants.
These important changes should have applied from 1 January 2001, but the EPAA lambasts the European Parliament for refusing to publish a full list of all assistants and attempting to get round the rules it has set itself, adding that the list proposed today by the European Parliament does not all reflect the transparency proclaimed by the EP since it only includes the names of accredited assistants, rather than the names of all assistants paid from the secretarial allowances. The EPAA therefore calls for ALL assistants' names, irrespective of whether they are employed as employees or service providers, to be included in a public list since assistants are paid by the EU' public purse and should come out of 'clandestinity'.