Strasbourg, 06/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - In a press release, the European Parliamentary Assistants' Association strongly criticises the fact that the EP has still not made public, in line with its commitments, a full list of all parliamentary assistants paid from MEPs' EUR 12,000 monthly secretarial allowance paid to MEPs by the European Parliament. The Association points out that this list should allow transparency in terms of the contracts between different MEPs and the assistants they employ but also in terms of the use of public money.
However, as EUROPE signalled at the beginning of the summer, the list is very incomplete and can only be consulted in an office at Parliament. The list only contains the names of accredited EP assistants where the MEP and assistant in question agree to their names appearing on it, following a ruling by the College of Quaestors taking account of the Directive on data protection, but the latter argument is unfounded, according to a lawyer who points out that the same reasoning could be applied to all the directories of the institutions giving staff names and jobs without consulting them. The assistants therefore argue that "the Parliament is not interested in real transparency" and have again called for a complete list of all MEPs' assistants to be published.