I did this interview in the autumn of 1994. The situation is generally the same today.
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The Danish EU parliament member Ib Christensen (64) is retiring after 11 years in the EU parliament (1978 - 79, 1984 - 1994) for the Danish No-to-EU-movement, before that 6 years in Folketinget (the Danish parliament).
He has become a millionaire in Danish kroner (1 DKK = 1.10 NOK = 0.148 USD) through his income from the EU parliament years, in spite of him - and opposed to most other EU representatives - giving most of his salary supplements to the NO movement in Denmark.
We will now present a calculation of what a hypothetical Norwegian EU parliament member can expect to make, and how his/her income will be composed (all amounts in NOK = 0.135 USD):
Basic salary (corresponds to basic salary in the national parliament, for Norway’s Storting:) ................................... 287.000 + Compensation for «general outlays» (need not be documented, by Christensen jokingly called «pencil cash» .......... ................ 280.000 + Travel allowance, which is calculated based on the beeline distance(!) from your home town to Strasbourg or Brussels, amounts to 9.000 per trip for Christensen, who lives in Randers, Jutland, Denmark. He buys the ticket for 2.700, giving a net profit of 6.300 per trip. Christensen estimates 50 trips per year (conservative estimate) for an EU parlamentarian. For him this sums up to a surplus of 315.000. For a prospective Norwegian parliament representative we (conservatively) assume 50% more distance, which then gives 315.000 * 1.5 =...................................................................470.000 + Per diem money when travelling is 1.700. Assuming an honest person that demands compensation for 100 days away from home per year, and actual outlays per day = 700, we get a surplus of .............................................................100.000 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
= Total gross income........................................................1.137.000
Note that the only taxable part of this income is the basic salary (in Norway 287.000). A careful estimate is then that income after tax is > 1 million NOK per year.
Christensen says that one easily saves up 1 millon NOK through 2 years in the EU-parliament.
He say that over the years, on 10 occations, he and some other representatives have proposed to change the regulations so that representatives only receive remuneration for actual expenses that are documented. These proposals have been overwhelmingly voted down, against 60 -70 votes, in a parliament of 567 representatives.
Furthermore, he tells of how comittee meetings sometimes are held in places like Madeira, the Canary Islands, Rhodos, which of course increases the distance component of travel remuneration spectacularly. Example: For a comittee meeting on the Canary Islands (Spanish territory, west of North Africa), the sum of distance and per diem remuneration for him was 23.000 DKK. He used 4.000 DKK for a charter ticket (this is a very busy tourist destination) for himself and his wife, and pocketed 19.000 in tax-free surplus.
German EU parlamentarians - living for instance in Berlin - travel for free within Germany having the same perks as members of the German Parliament (Bundestag). But they still receive full distance compensation from the EU, so this is double remuneration. A corresponding state of affairs in Denmark was considered unacceptable when the public was told about it, and it was ended there. For Greek EU parliamentarians the EU distance remuneration is an extreme gravy train due to Greece’s eastern geographical position in Europe, and their standards of living are on another planet compared to ordinary Greek citizens.
Christensen says that it is quite common for EU parliamentarians to drop in on a comittee meeting and leave again at once, after having signed up as a «participant». This entitles them to 1700 NOK for each «participation». This is not illegal, and no one exercises formal control. But in an extreme case there was public outcry, when the media dug up the story about a notorious Belgian EU representative, who signed up for participation in a meeting every day during a year to get this compensation.
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So far Christensen.
What sort of system is it, when the EU parliament allows this rotten state of affairs to persist, and even resist obviously reasonable proposals (10 attempts!) to reform it? What does such a system do with possibly honest and idealist (at least initially) representatives?
A «social Europe» through the European Union??? Give me a break.
Trond Andresen