The European Parliament is using seven-year old data, based on guesswork, as an excuse not to audit how MEPs spend their €4,500 monthly office allowances.
Each MEP gets that lump sum every month to cover office expenses - totalling some €40m a year in public money.
But transparency-driven efforts to make sure the money is properly spent has been blocked for years by the European Parliament's administration and some of the MEPs' themselves leadership.
They claim anywhere betw...
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Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.