Every month, the members of the EU Parliament receive the equivalent of just over SEK 50,000 a month straight into a special account. It must be used for “general expenses”, for example mobiles and laptops, printed matter, seminar activities and representation.
But the rules surrounding this tax money are very far from the Swedish principle of openness. No one from parliament checks the money. You do not have to pay back what is left over and not report to the public.
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Don’t want to give out
The Social Democrats’ top candidate Helene Fritzon said in the last election campaign that EU parliamentarians’ money should of course be auditable. But now S belongs, together with M, KD and SD, to those who do not want to show any receipts for SVT.
– We have a party auditor who reviews, makes an audit report, and then we report it on our website, says Helene Fritzon.
SVT has asked all 21 Swedish members if we can see their receipts. Several, including S, emphasize that they voted for openness in parliament, but still refuse to show their own receipts. Several parties refer to party support in Sweden, where the public has no transparency. But the EU’s office money goes directly to individual members.
The members from L, C, MP and V choose to let journalists examine the receipts, on site in Brussels.
“Immense sums”
– These are enormous sums. I think it’s regrettable that more colleagues don’t choose to be open and transparent because it breeds contempt for politicians, says Center Party’s top candidate Emma Wiesner.
She has done her own accounting in Excel. But with some parties, you have to go through every single receipt in dozens of binders to see how the money was spent.
At the Left Party, SVT’s team discovered that the high costs for IT equipment were in fact SEK 60,000 lower than the chancellery itself had calculated with a calculator and sent out to journalists.
– There is certainly room for improvement, but we are in any case open, says Malin Björk.