Dutch lead by example over MEP expenses

Date: 27/05/1999

By Gareth Harding

Dutch MEPs and European election candidates from all the country's main political parties have signed up to a six-point code of conduct laying down strict rules for expenses.

The move was prompted by the failure of the European Parliament to agree a common statute for members earlier this month. With elections just a fortnight away, MEPs are under increasing pressure to clean up their act, with the public seeing Euro MPs as "money-grabbing opportunists", according to Socialist candidate Michiel van Hulten.

Under the code, Dutch members have pledged to withdraw from the assembly's generous pension fund, only claim actual travel costs and publish details of any income they receive from other sources on the Internet. In addition, members living in Brussels will only get one third of their daily allowance.

Van Hulten said that MEPs' pay and expenses were the "biggest issue on the doorsteps" and that the code was an "attempt to shift the focus to the policy side of things".

Leading Dutch Socialist Max van der Berg plans to send the code to colleagues in other member states and ask his Dutch co-signatories to try to bring the other political groups on board.

Meanwhile, any remaining hopes that the Parliament and EU governments might reach an early agreement on the draft members' statute have been quashed by the author of the assembly's version of the text, German Socialist Willi Rothley.

Earlier this month, MEPs threw out all the changes made to their draft statute by the Council of Ministers.

Immediately after the vote, both sides said they planned more talks. But Rothley said this week Parliament was still waiting for "line-by-line" explanations of the Council's proposed text and that a pre-election deal was therefore "impossible".

Keyword: MEPs' statute.