Race to board EU 'gravy train'!

The race for a place on the EU's "gravy train" is on! The MLP and AD have already announced their contenders in the race. The PN has not as yet announced its candidates. But this is expected to happen any day now.

Once the contenders are known, the parties will switch on their propaganda machine to convince voters of the need to vote in the European Parliamentary election in June, even if the presence of five Maltese will be extremely difficult to notice among the 732 MEPs who will constitute that august assembly!

Quite soon we will be receiving the usual propaganda from the political parties as well as from the individual candidates. We will be told that they deserve our vote because they will be sacrificing themselves for our sake as well as for the country, by being so often away from their families. What they will probably not tell us is what they will be receiving in return for their "sacrifice".

The first thing one will think of is the MEPs' salary. Up to now they are entitled to the same salary which MPs in their respective countries receive. But the EU is pushing to have the same salary paid to all MEPs irrespective of the countries they come from. The proposed salary is around Lm40,000 a year. Although difficulties have been raised mostly by German and Italian MEPs - whose salaries are way above the proposed salary - it is expected that the new equal salary for all MEPs will be introduced in the near future, most probably after the EU's enlargement on May 1, 2004.

This is onIy the start. MEPs will be entitled to an "allowance" of around Lm4,900 per month to employ one or two assistants. Quite a number of MEPs employ their own wives, fiancées or some other family member, even if much of the work is given to the regular staff employed by the EU Commission!

It is a known fact that MEPs can make a hefty sum of money whenever they travel to Brussels or Strasbourg to attend Parliament, because they are not reimbursed for the money they actually spend for their air ticket, etc. MEPs are paid a standard rate - which is the highest rate of an air ticket on that particular route, plus 20 per cent to cover ancillary costs!

So if an MEP arranges to buy all his travel tickets from one agency, and thus gets them at a very low cost, he can make a good profit whenever he travels to Brussels or Strasbourg to attend Parliament. A British MEP, Daniel Hannan, calculates that he makes around Lm300 profit on his travels to Brussels each week!

MEPs also receive a daily allowance of around Lm110 to cover accommodation and meals. They have an allowance of around Lm1,500 a month for petrol, postage and similar expenses. While they are entitled to be driven by limousine to and from Parliament, they also receive an allowance to cover taxi fares in case they leave parliament after 10 p.m., when the limousine service stops.

MEPs are regularly invited to lunches and dinners by lobbyists, of whom there are thousands in Brussels. All the MEPs have to do is lend a frlendly ear to what the lobbyists require - usually support for a directive or initiative which their bosses (a multinational company, perhaps) would want to push or block!

The last - but definitely not least - "sacrifice" which MEPs would have to endure is the pension system. It is planned that MEPs would be able to retire when they reach 60. And the pension would be calculated at four-fifths of an MEP's salary. At the same time the EU has succeeded in forcing member states to raise the retirement age of their own nationals by five years, in most cases to 65!

Are you at all surprised then, that politicians of all hues - greens, reds, blues and yellows - in Europe, are so excited about the EU, and would never dream of telling their own citizens that their country would be better off outside the EU than inside? This is why the EU and its institutions have been dubbed as "the gravy train". Malta has now become another station where one can board that "gravy train"!