International

This week focused for the most part, of course, on the unstable euro. Just like their colleagues in the Netherlands, Europe's market-minded liberals and right-wing Christian Democrats hammered away at the message that the only way that the euro can be saved is via drastic spending cuts in the member states. Against such a background it's a sad business to contemplate that when it comes to the European Parliament's own spending, Members are happy to carry on chucking money around: you have to look after your mates, after all.

There were two concrete proposals on the agenda which together could quickly have delivered around €50 million in savings. Compared to the EU's total budget, of course, that's peanuts, but that doesn't mean it isn't of any importance. The first concerned the proposed increase in payments made to members to hire assistants. Now our team in Brussels is also under terrific pressure and if we were asked if we could use more staff, everyone would say yes. But in these difficult economic times it's not a good idea to be so free and easy with taxpayers' money. It was with this in mind that I supported a proposal from the Dutch Greens – the 'Green Left' - opposing the increase. When the proposal was defeated, I voted against the necessary line in the parliament's budget. Unfortunately other Dutch parties did not see things so clearly and the Green Left ended up voting for the total EP budget, even when it turned out that the increase in the money to hire assistants had gone through.

The other proposed saving which bit the dust concerned a proposal not to meet twice in Strasbourg during September (this, believe it or not, is to make up for there being no plenary session in August!), but to limit this to two shorter sessions in a single week. Anyone can understand that, whatever else, this would at least save the rigmarole of one expensive trip while formally fulfilling the obligation to meet twelve times per year in Strasbourg. Good for the budget and good for the environment, yet the majority voted against.

In addition, there was the business of salaries for EU officials. The Court of Justice is looking into this and the Commission has already increased the relevant budget for next year, from which you can deduce that the officials will indeed get their increase.

In general it's precisely those parties which believe most strongly in Europe which are most attached to increasing EU spending. Because no-one understands how you can simply carry on in this way in times of across-the-board spending cuts, the gap between Brussels and the ordinary man and woman in the street grows ever wider. I have put written questions to the European Commission asking how they can propose such a massive budget increase in times of generalised economies. Let's see how long they take to answer me this time.