MEP Marlene Mizzi is the most inquisitive parliamentarian having sent the European Commission about 470 written questions on topics ranging from animal protection and discrimination against Roma minorities to “people without digital skills”, politico.eu has reported.

The website quotes the Commission saying  it was being overwhelmed with questions from the Parliament’s 751 members. It expected to receive a record 17,000 this year (the current record is 13,400 in 2013) and said it would streamline its internal procedures to “increase the efficiency of the handling of parliamentary questions.”

In the first four months this year, 693 MEPs submitted an average of nine questions each.

 “The Commission attaches great importance to Parliament’s right of democratic scrutiny and to giving replies of high quality to parliamentary questions,” Frans Timmermans, the vice president of the Commission, wrote in June. “However, the ever increasing number of questions does entail considerable costs for the Commission.”

If the current trend continues, he wrote in reply to a Palriamentary question, the time spent by the Commission staff in replying to parliamentary questions would represent at least 76 full-time equivalents. “This can be expressed as approximately €490 per question.”

Using that math, the Commission will spend more than €8 million this year answering the questions, a process that according to Mr Timmermans required that each reply was attributed, drafted, validated, inter-service coordinated, collegiate endorsed, and translated.