Brussels, 27/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - The informal meeting of the ministers for European affairs, which took place in Luxembourg on Tuesday and was attended by the President of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell, left the door open for an agreement on the contents of the status of the MEPs before the end of the Luxembourg Presidency. This was the message sent out by Luxembourg minister Nicolas Schmit in Brussels on Wednesday, although he recognised that various technical issues related to the MEPs' pension schemes have still to be clarified.
“It was not anticipated, not possible to reach agreement yesterday evening”, said the minister, stressing that the main thing was to hold “an exchange of views on a few ideas”. “Since yesterday evening, I am a bit more optimistic that it will be possible” to reach an agreement on “an approach which guarantees transparency, which is reasonable, fair and non-discriminatory”, continued Nicolas Schmit, stressing that the President of the European Parliament share the Council's preoccupation with transparency on the expense reimbursement system.
As we indicated (EUROPE 8933), the wording proposed by the Luxembourg Presidency takes the draft status as it stood at the end of the legislative period, providing for a parliamentary allowance of 7000 EUR (instead of the 8600 EUR the MEPs allocated for themselves) and a phasing in for MEPs whose current pay is still a long way off this sum: allowances for the MEPs from the new Member States tend to be below 2000 EUR, 1000 EUR in some cases.