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Perhaps I’m gullible, but I always try to put questions in a straightforward fashion to increase the transparency of the European Parliament. This week I received once again a rebuttal. For the time being there will be no detailed insight into the positions which senior officials occupy after they leave the EP secretariat. This fits the pattern of allowing as little information as possible to emerge. I find this a scandalous attitude, not only on the part of the officials who write such responses, but also on the person whose ultimate responsibility this is, the EP president. Yes, you guessed it, it’s that man again: Martin Schulz. But I’m not going to let it rest there.

I’ve already drawn attention to the fact that EU officials are paid regal salaries and expenses. This usually stirs up a storm of protest, but I haven’t changed my position. Not long ago, however, I discovered that this tale has a strange twist in it: when an EU official takes his or her pension, he or she continues to pay the special low tax rate to the European Commission, no matter where they settle. There’s even a special agreement with non-member state Switzerland to avoid ex-officials having to pay double taxation, to the EU and to the Swiss. In my view this has to change and change quickly. Retired EU officials should pay normal tax, just as everyone else has to in the countries in which they live.

The motto of the European Union is ‘Unity in Diversity’. Although the European Commission is always harping on about ‘European’ culture, they are keenest on strengthening national or regional artistic expressions. They continue, however, to think in terms of the ‘market’. This is evident from the idea of facilitating access to national films and other audio-visual works by adding subtitles. For this to happen, subtitling would have to become much cheaper. And how is this to be achieved? By setting translators from the entire world one against the other, having them bid for work via so-called ‘crowdsourcing’. We will soon perhaps have more subtitled works, but this will be achieved by exploiting a group of professionals and putting the quality of subtitling in jeopardy. It’s typical of Brussels and something about which I intend to take action and not of course let ride.

As I write it is still not clear whether the member state government leaders will be able to reach an agreement on Greece. However that may be, what is clear is that the interests of big capital and financial institutions will be secured and that only when that is achieved might it be possible to discuss measures to help ordinary people. This fits into a well-known pattern: nepotism, which government leaders want to put an end to in Greece, is an everyday occurrence in Brussels. Now, new instruments provided by Transparency International and Politico.eu make it possible for anyone to see how things are set. They don’t provide a lot of laughs, but what they do offer are a number of clues by which you can unmask puppets of the multinationals such as Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE/ADLE).