Opinion Mary RafteryIs Hans-Peter Martin the hero of the plain people of Europe, or a dirty, rotten scoundrel sneaking around spying on his fellow European parliamentarians? The Austrians, who elected him in the first place, gave a resounding answer - he got a huge vote in the weekend's MEP elections.
Mr Martin is a well-regarded former journalist, and has taken to new technology with a vengeance. Using camera phones and mini-digital cameras, he did a Martin Luther on colleagues, snapping them signing on for what are called "Strasbourg Fridays" . The Parliament no longer sits on Friday, but numerous MEPs sign in on Friday mornings, claim their €262 daily allowance, and disappear home.
Mr Martin's uncompromising witch-hunt caused universal fury among MEPs, and probably did more for European unity than decades of obscure treaties. Some of them physically attacked him , others (including an Irish MEP) screamed liar at him over the airwaves. The point, they all said, was that there was nothing illegal about claiming for Strasbourg Fridays - the rules allowed it.
The issue of MEP expenses in general was a significant one across Europe during the elections. Cynicism at the Parliament's inability to clean up its act was undoubtedly an important factor in the low turnout in many countries. In Ireland it never became an issue. There is a certain exhaustion here with talk of the gravy train. We have become so used to it that we just shrug our shoulders. Like the poor, we think, huge, unaccounted-for MEP expenses will always be with us.
However, for some, this is utterly unacceptable. Five years ago, a group of nine MEPs founded a group called the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform. None of these MEPs was Irish. During the life of the last Parliament, the group grew to 90, with MEP members from 13 of the 15 EU states. Again, none of them is Irish.
Dutch MEP Michiel van Hulten, one of the campaign's founders, is very clear that the current expenses scam, where MEPs can claim full airfares and day rates without providing receipts for what they actually spend, has had a seriously corroding effect on confidence in the parliament and consequently on European democracy and integration. Through these (sadly, perfectly legitimate) methods, MEPs can make over €50,000 a year on top of their already substantial salaries.
European parliamentarians have been merrily throwing out motions to reform their expenses system for years. The parliaments of 1994 and 1999 each in turn claimed house-cleaning was a priority, but no significant reforms materialised.
The Campaign for Parliamentary Reform this year commissioned a survey on how MEPs voted over the past five years on internal reform issues relating to their expenses and to general streamlining of parliamentary business.
Ireland emerges as being firmly in the anti-reform camp. While four Irish MEPs (Pat Cox, Proinsias de Rossa, and Greens Patricia McKenna and Nuala Ahern, to their great credit) voted consistently for reform measures, the majority of our European representatives were against reform.
Fine Gael, despite its pro-European rhetoric, had the worst record. Skulking miserably at the bottom of the Irish MEP list were Joe McCartin (who opposed 87 per cent of pro-reform motions at parliament), and Avril Doyle (82 per cent opposition to reform).
While not quite as bad as Fine Gael, the Fianna Fáil members were also classed as anti-reform. They opposed well over half of the reform measures proposed in the Parliament. Dana Rosemary Scallon's voting record was also anti-reform.
The European Parliament's latest wheeze is that MEPs will agree to account for their expenses only if most of them are granted a huge salary increase. At present, MEPs' salaries are tied to those of their local parliaments. This results in large disparities - Italian MEPs, for instance, are paid almost four times more than their Spanish counterparts. The lavish and non-accountable expenses system has been cynically justified as a means to top up the take-home pay of the poorer MEPs. Obviously, it equally benefits those on the higher salaries.
The current proposal is for a standard MEP salary regardless of nationality, to be set at half the level of a European Court judge, amounting to €9,000 per month. Given that this represents an enormous increase of almost 50 per cent for many parliamentarians (including the Irish), the governments of Sweden, France, Germany and Austria baulked at the proposal. In an election year, they felt, such increases would be greeted with outrage by an electorate already furious about expenses. And so the status quo remains and the gravy trains rumbles on.
The simple fact is that by tying expenses reform to the proposal to standardise (and thus increase) salary levels, MEPs have merely reinforced the public perception of the parliament as an institution that condones greed. It may well take several repeat doses of Hans-Peter Martin's tactics to make them realise that they are collectively dragging an important cornerstone of European democracy into the mud.