Making allowances for the system

Date: 13/06/1996

As the entire Brussels press corps waited eagerly last

week for Jacques Santer's announcement to the European Parliament on the easing of the worldwide ban on UK beef, some Euro MPs could not resist hogging the spotlight and talking about other equally sensitive matters, such as their own expenses.

European People's Party leader Wilfried Martens, in particular, was determined to get in a word or two about how the Belgian press was besmirching his reputation over the use of taxpayers' money.

His message, through clenched teeth, was that he was doing nothing illegal or dishonourable with his expenses and it was the system governing the way expenses were disbursed which needed sorting out, not the MEPs.

Karel Van Miert, former MEP and now Competition Commissioner, knows just how Martens feels.

For years, Van Miert desperately tried to stop the Parliament's expenses people paying him a daily allowance, covering accommodation and meals for turning up at committee meetings in rue Belliard, a stone's throw from his Brussels home.

But politicians cannot be allowed to throw the system into chaos like that, and the civil servants insisted that he should keep the cash because he was entitled to it.