European Parliament: more spending scrutiny

05 March 2010

The European Parliament's secretive secretariat is having a new and uncomfortable experience. The Parliament's budgets committee is asking probing questions about its management of the Parliament's budget, writes Stephen Gardner. MEPs don't usually look so closely. But in the tough economic times, the Parliament's rising expenditure stands out. This year, it will cost a huge £1.42 billion, nearly three times the £500 million covering both British Houses of Parliament. Next year, it will be even more, on the basis that the Parliament needs more resources because the Lisbon Treaty gives it more powers. Officials argue that the European Parliament has costs that other parliaments do not, such as translation and the travelling circus to Strasbourg. But even if the entire translation and interpretation cost, and the travel budgets of staff and MEPs are deducted, the total is still a cool £1.12 billion. Questioning so far by the committee on budgets has raised serious questions about control of expenditure. For example, the Parliament bought in 2005 six body scanners – the type that strip scannees naked. These cost around £410,000 but, because of MEPs' concerns about their health and dignity, have never been used. The Parliament is trying to offload them, though demand for second-hand and now rather out-of-date scanners might be limited. Ill-thought-out purchases like these are unsurprising given that the Parliament lacks "a general framework for risk management", a system for spotting weaknesses in budgetary control. In mid-2008, following an auditor's recommendation, the secretariat said it would put this in place, but nothing has been done. Approval of the spending of different departments therefore remains in the hands of authorising officers, who submit reports on which they themselves sign off, based on "internal control systems which they have each put in place." Individual spending decisions are also "verified" by the person who made them. The budgets committee says that its work of scrutiny is hampered because, since June 2008, there has been a vacancy for the official in charge of liaising between the committee and the secretariat. The job is being done on a temporary basis by the Parliament's budgetary affairs director, meaning that for nearly two years, reporting to the committee on the secretariat's budgetary management has been done, on an entirely neutral and disinterested basis, by... the person in charge of the secretariat's budgetary management.

 

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