Transparency

Diet

My regular income as a Member of Parliament in 2023 is €9,808.67 gross per month. I pay tax on this income as normal in Germany.

In addition, I receive a meeting allowance of €338 per day that I work in the Parliament in Brussels. I receive this money to pay for the additional costs of accommodation and meals while in Brussels and Strasbourg. MEPs also have access to meeting allowances during Covid-19, but these funds are drawn down to a much lesser extent because most MEPs were rarely in Brussels during the pandemic. I am sometimes offered honoraria for lectures, which I usually decline. If I accept them, I donate this extra income. I donate about 20,000 euros a year to charitable causes and to my party.

Personnel costs

MEPs have a monthly staff budget of €27,937.00 at their disposal in 2023. This budget is used to pay the salaries and social security contributions of my current six employees, four of whom work in Brussels, one in Berlin and one in Magdeburg. Interns are also paid from this budget, as well as the business trips or further training of my employees. It is important to me that all my employees, including the interns, receive a fair wage so that the personnel budget is used in full. The staff budget is not managed by the MEPs themselves, but by the European Parliament.

Funds for public relations

All members of parliament are also entitled to a budget for political public relations. In the past year 2022, this budget totaled EUR 48,500.00. In order to draw on these funds, each individual application must be checked for conformity with the guidelines and approved individually by the parliamentary group. I can use the approved funds for events or print products such as information brochures, for example.

General expenditure allowance

In order to be able to pay office costs and other general expenses, I will receive €4,778.00 per month in 2023, like all Members of Parliament, in an account set up specifically for this purpose. I use these funds, for example, for my office rent in Berlin and Magdeburg, telephone costs for my team, hardware and software for my team, postage costs, office supplies and similar costs of this kind.

In recent years, our Green Group has repeatedly pointed out that the use of the general cost allowance is not transparent enough. However, since so far all motions to revise the rules have been rejected or have not yet been implemented, the Greens/EFA have made a voluntary commitment on 1 July 2017 to create more transparency: we want to ensure that MEPs' handling of the money from the general expenses allowance becomes more comprehensible.

You can download the commitment click here (in english).

Lobby meeting

In order to know what is needed for a humane and just policy, I meet with many different interest groups. But this has to happen in a way that is comprehensible to everyone. that is why our group has voluntarily committed itself to document all meetings with lobby groups in a publicly accessible way. the only exception is meetings whose publication could endanger the persons concerned. this can be the case, for example, with human rights activists.

Under the following link you can see with whom I met and when:

To the past meetings

Overview of the General Cost Allowance 2022

(general expenditure allowance, GEA for short)

Last year, my team and I used funds totaling 56,143.21 for this purpose. This overview shows what we used these funds for.
NoteThe exact amounts may still change slightly for 2022.