Two days ago the European Parliament voted in the new commissioners. One day ago Dutch tv-station RTL published, how much the commissioners in the previous team spent on travelling and gifts in 2009.
The story is interesting from a journalistic point of view and from a transparency point of view. Because the data came out through a freedom of information request – a still rather exotic method in the EU capital. Yet efficient.
Chairman Barroso spend 730.000 euro on travel, dinners and gifts, and is the Commission’s biggest spender according to the information obtained by Dutch RTL. RTL also figures out how much the expenses for each commissioner cost on average, how much they travelled inside and outside the EU and other analyses.
It took the EU three months to provide newsprogram RTL News with the chart showing all expenses for 2009 for each commissioner, according to a press release sent by mail from RTL.
The Commission did not disclose the receipts that add up to the 4 million euro expense-bill. Therefore it is yet unclear on what exactly the public’s money was spend by the commissioners, RTL comments.
Read the RTL story here (in Dutch) and see the overview over all commissioners and find out, how much each commissioner spent on travels, gifts and so forth.
#1 by Nicholas on May 8, 2010 - 4:01 pm
What a complete waste of money. I accept that the Commissioners have to travel, but not that it should cost the EU this much. If I paid for second class rail travel every day of the year, as well as a few flights thrown in here and there, I doubt it would come to much over 20,000 per year. But 700,000, that is absolutely ridiculous. As for gifts, this needs to stop.
How do politicians at the EU level expect to restore or establish faith in the EU with expenses like this, which make the scandal in Britain seem mild.