The MEPs Project: the ghost offices of MEPs

2017-05-31

In an unprecedented EU-wide collaborative effort, the journalists from "The MEPs Project" located in every member state investigated how members of the European Parliament (MEPs) make use of the general expenses payments they receive every month.

Each MEP gets 4 342 euros every month, mainly to fund an office in his constituency. But offices for 249 MEPs do not exist or seem nowhere to be found, our investigation shows. So far, only 133 out of the 748 current parliamentarians told us what they pay in office rent. We found at least 42 cases where MEPs pay rent to national political parties or even to their own personal accounts.

As the EU parliament does not audit the use of these expense payments, there is no documentation available for how the funding is used. And, according to the research, neither the existence of MEPs’ national offices nor certain conditions of their funding are monitored by the parliament.

Our reporters requested information from all MEPs and analysed documents from the parliament, land registries and other sources. For the first time ever, journalists shed light on who owns MEPs' offices across the European Union.

In a considerable number of cases, it seems to be unclear what use the MEPs make of their expense payments. And it is equally uncertain as to whether they are actually used for their intended purpose. This seems to contradict the long-held claim of the EU parliament – that MEPs should attempt to bridge the gap between Brussels and EU citizens.

There are no controls in place to ensure that MEPs return those expense payments that remain unused for parliamentary work. Some of them do this voluntarily at the end of their mandate.

Journalismfund.eu financed some of the freelancers on this project. In total, 48 journalists were involved in all 28 Member states.

Team members

Delphine Reuter

Delphine Reuter is a Belgian freelance journalist, based in Brussels.

Crina Boros

Crina Boros is a London-based freelance data-driven investigative reporter and trainer.

Staffan Dahllöf

Staffan Dahllöf is a freelance reporter based in Copenhagen, specialised in FOI.

Atanas Tchobanov

Atanas Tchobanov is co-founder of the Bulgarian investigative website Bivol.bg.

Pavla Holcová

Pavla Holcová is an investigative journalist and founder of investigace.cz, based in Prague.

Guia Baggi

Guia Baggi is an Italian independent journalist focusing on the impacts of climate change.

Tevye Markson

Tevye Markson is a British freelance journalist.

Katalin Erdelyi

Katalin Erdelyi (1982) is a Hungarian journalist at Atlatszo.

Balázs Tóth

Balázs Tóth PhD (1979) works for the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, atlatszo.hu and also as a private attorney.

Lorenzo Di Pietro

Lorenzo Di Pietro is a Rome-based investigative journalist with a data-driven approach.

Ana Poenariu

Ana Poenariu is a Romanian journalist, based in Bucharest.

Supported

Grant of €11,900, allocated on 01/02/2017

JF/JA2A/2017/372

Grant

European Cross-border Grants

need resources for your own investigative story?

Journalismfund Europe's flexible grants programmes enable journalists to produce relevant public interest stories with a European mind-set from international, national, and regional perspectives.

Apply