Salary of an MEP

A French voter asks:

“I’m André, and I’d like to know a Euro-MP’s salary.”

The response:

“Hi, I’m Pierre Assemat, a journalist at euronews. There have been big differences in the salaries of European Parliament members, depending which country they come from. They’ve been indexed to national MPs’ salaries. For example, an Italian earns 13,000 euros now. But a Hungarian or Latvian earns less than 1,000 euros gross per month. All that will change with the new legislature. All the MEPs will earn the same salary of 7,665 euros gross per month, taxable. Governments will no longer pay this. It will come out of the European budget. But to satisfy the demands of certain elected members, this new regime allows Member States who wish to to keep the old system for two more legislatures. Another thing is that the 736 members of the new parliament will have to follow much stricter rules on expenses. Notably, this means they’ll have to show justification for all their spending. Everyone hopes that this reform will lead to stopping abusive practices, because, after all, it’s also a bit about our money.”

Copyright © 2009 euronews

tags: EU Parliament, European elections