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Revealed: MEPs’ millions in outside earnings

Transparency International has called for stricter controls on EU lawmakers, as a report shows many hold lucrative positions with firms that also lobby Brussels.

MEPs collectively earn more than €8.6 million a year from outside jobs – including from private companies that also actively lobby on EU policy, according to a report published by Transparency International EU today (6 May).

The group has called for EU lawmakers to be banned from moonlighting, as figures show over two thirds of the 705 deputies disclose activities in addition to their core role.

In some cases, they earn more from outside activities than they do from their MEP salary of €10,000 a month, and sit on boards of corporations intimately connected with their day jobs, the study found.

The EU last year tightened its rules in the wake of Qatargate, a scandal over alleged foreign influence on the legislative process – and the reform means lawmakers now publish more fine-grained details of outside earnings.

But for Transparency International EU, the new rules still don’t go far enough to avoid conflicts of interest.

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

The EU last year tightened its rules in the wake of Qatargate, a scandal over alleged foreign influence on the legislative process – and the reform means lawmakers now publish more fine-grained details of outside earnings.

Further down, Monika Hohlmeier (Germany/European People’s Party) earns around €75,000 per year for her work for agriculture and energy company BayWa AG, while Axel Voss (Germany/EPP) gets €54,000 as a data protection advisor at Deutsche Telekom and from law firm Bietmann, the group calculates.

“Perhaps the MEP itself is not involved in this part of the activities” linked to lobbying, Raphaël Kergueno, senior policy officer at Transparency International EU, told Euronews, adding that “the more we have these kind of loopholes, the harder it becomes to actually enforce even the rules that we have.”

Though Van Overtveldt sits in the Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, ECON, which recently passed new laws on payment services, he told Euronews there is “no conflict of interest” from his outside activity, which he said is focused on NBX’s international expansion plans.

“The experiences that I have in the various organizations or at BayWa and the knowledge that I generate there enrich me,” Hohlmeier said of the post which earns her an average €6,000 per month plus travel costs, adding that she remained critical of high subsidies paid to large landowning farmers under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

Kergueno doesn’t accuse any individual MEP of acting inappropriately, as he says alleged conflicts of interest can only be adjudicated by an independent body with sufficient resources, as is the case in France.

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