EU: More then 800.000 euros of easy money revealed by wob-request

BRUSSELS - 20TH OF OCTOBER 2008 - About 60 Members of the EU-Parliament have signed up for daily allowances of almost 300 euro for a day of meetings, when no meetings are held. This was revealed by a recent wob-request. A practice, that according to The Parliament has cost tax-payers nearly one million euro over four years.

"The Eurowobbing did it: The confirmatory application gave better results than the original one. The message is: keep trying," says researcher Ries Baeten, who got out lists over how many MEPs had signed up for Fridays.

The story was widely mentioned in Dutch media: De Telegraaf, Elsevier (includes link to previous RTL tv documentary on how signing up on Friday morning is going on), Reformatorisch Dagblad and Z24.

The wobbing-procedure in this case was without too many problems, says Ries Baeten, who also has been struggling with more difficult wob applications. Read his application, correspondence here (pdf, 478 KB)and see the figures, he wobbed out.