British MEPs hop aboard EU's "gravy plane"
The Sunday Times reported on Open Europe's findings that British MEPs are spending more than £100,000 a year on fact-finding missions to long-haul tourist destinations from the Seychelles to Jamaica. On one trip, David Martin, the Scottish MEP, and Giles Chichester, former leader of the Conservative MEPs, were invited to watch La Traviata at Sydney Opera House before a dinner in Sydney harbour aboard a luxury catamaran. The article quotes Open Europe's Lorraine Mullally saying, "Never mind the gravy train, the European parliament is more like the gravy plane. MEPs are clocking up thousands of miles on dubious 'fact-finding' trips to luxurious locations".
The article also reported that outgoing Welsh MEP Glenys Kinnock is the most far-travelled, clocking up 127,465 miles, equivalent to flying around the world more than five times.
Sunday Times News of the World
MEPs' expenses under the spotlight
The BBC Politics Show on Sunday looked ahead to the European elections and featured Open Europe's Lorraine Mullally discussing the need for far greater transparency of MEPs' expenses - given that they have access to £363,000 a year for which they do not have to produce a single receipt. She said: "The expenses are part of the wider problem with the European Union. People think it does too much, there's too much waste; they can't tell what's going on; they can't tell how their MEPs voted; they don't know who their MEPs are; there's not enough scrutiny of things like how much MEPs are spending."
The Sunday Express reported on Open Europe's research, which showed that in March this year the European Parliament, including the majority of British MEPs, voted to keep details of their expenses secret. Open Europe's Mats Persson was quoted saying, "It's very disappointing to see so many MEPs who pride themselves on working for more transparency and honesty in the EU, hypocritically voting to keep their own expenses secret. It's precisely this type of double standard that makes the public lose faith in politicians. Unlike the disgraced MPs in Westminster, MEPs in Brussels can spend their allowances on holidays, duck ponds, moats, mortgages or whatever takes their fancy, safe in the knowledge that neither the media nor taxpayers will ever find out."
Open Europe's research was also discussed on LBC Radio yesterday with Andrew Pierce, and is cited by Ambrose Evans Pritchard, writing in the Telegraph in a wider piece about the EU. He argues that "Europe's elites have crossed a political line by reviving the EU Constitution under the guise of the Lisbon Treaty and ramming it through without referendums, after it had already been rejected by French and Dutch voters. To continue a second time after rejection by the Irish - alone in voting - amounts to a putsch."
The WSJ has a feature
on the EP elections, reporting that "Turnout has declined six straight times
since the first elections in 1979. It was 45.5% in 2004. This year, surveys
forecast around 40% of EU citizens to show up to vote", citing figures gathered
by Open Europe. It adds that the reputation of the European Parliament "also has
been battered by an embarrassing uproar over abuse of expenses - featuring sums
much larger than those in a scandal currently roiling Britain's Parliament"
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In a feature on Labour's leader in the European Parliament, Glenis Willmott, the BBC's Politics Show cited Open Europe's research on the cost of EU regulation to the UK economy, which found that EU regulation cost the UK economy £18.5bn in 2008 alone.