Also – corruption remains one of the biggest challenges for all societies, including European ones. It harms the EU as a whole by lowering investment levels and reducing public finances. The general public, when looking at finances, only care about the “tip of the iceberg”. When we see that all members of the European Parliament are paid the same amount every month from the EU budget with the salary of € 8,200 per month with a mild EU tax bringing it down to around € 6,400, some just “let it go”, but there are lots of other bonuses and benefits. For example – if an MEP checks into the parliament building, he or she gets another 306eur of daily subsistence. MEPs can hire staff to assist them in their job for an amount of € 23,400 per month. To cover secretarial costs at home MEPs receive € 4,300 per month. They do not need to deliver any proof and MEPs can just use them as an extra salary. That’s why some MEPs never or very seldom appear in the meetings.
Third, there was a case when Latvian members of the European Parliament, Iveta Grigule and Andrejs Mamikins, bypassed the parliament’s rules preventing conflicts of interests and employed each other’s relatives as interns.
We can conclude that although on paper the European Union can be considered democratic in its own way, in reality it is not because of the fact that there are many examples of how the EU democracy aspects’ (equality, human rights, participation, representation, transparency) aren’t met and / or are violated.
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