Today the EP's Budget committee sent a clear signal to its citizens calling for a freeze of expenses related to travel and the individual allowances of its members until the end of this legislature.

“The institutions, in the context of continued challenging economic circumstances, should freeze their administrative budgets,” reads the report adopted today.

The 2013 budgets for the EP and other institutions (except the European Commission) will be prepared in the middle of an economic and financial crisis and ongoing national budgetary consolidation efforts. At the same time, the European Parliament must respect legally binding obligations and possible subsequent increases of the budget.

Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (NL, D66) who is shadowing the report for ALDE, comments: "We have to remain realistic: Croatia's accession will create additional costs for the EU institutions. And the European Court of Justice needs more funds in order to deal with the increasingly heavy workload. To compensate, the EP and other EU institutions should have their own budgets very critically analysed to identify future savings. I therefore proposed to carry out such a thorough and independent evaluation of the EP budget by the end of 2012." Gerbrandy's proposal received broad support in the committee.

Last year he had already secured support for a system to be developed to use the collected air miles on flights reimbursed by Parliament to further reduce costs.

The Budget committee furthermore requests:

A detailed and clear overview of budget lines that were under-implemented in 2011 and an objective analysis of the underlying reasons;

Early information, dialogue and a transparent decision-making process in the field of building policy and detailed information on the progress in buildings projects every six months;

The Bureau to present prudent needs-based draft estimates, in which targeted increases be counterbalanced by savings identified in other areas.

The plenary vote takes place on 16 February in Strasbourg.

For more information, please contact 

Corlett Neil - Tel:+32 2 284 20 77 Mob:+32 478 78 22 84

van der Steen Elzelien - Tel:+32-2-284 26 23 Mob:+32-477-45 42 84