The European Commission is well-known for paying its members lush salaries. It has now been shown that the Commission also likes to spend large sums of money to promote itself, having paid as much as 2.75 million euros between 2019 and 2023 for photographers, videographers, and makeup artists.
An information request made by a member of the German populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) revealed that between the end of 2019 and April of this year, the European Commission had spent millions, 95% of which went to photographers and videographers, Die Welt reports.
This large and questionable expenditure, which also included travel expenses and salaries, was defended by EU Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn, who wrote an explanation for the outlay.
“Picture reporting on the activities of the members of the College is crucial in informing citizens about the work of the Commission and ensuring transparency,” he said.
“Total expenditure on photographers and make-up artists in the current legislature (end of 2019 to end of April 2023) amounted to €2,756,286, of which 95% was spent on photographers and videographers capturing thousands of Commission events in Brussels, EU Member States and beyond. These figures include salaries and mission expenses,” he added.
Hahn noted that there were no recorded expenses for hairdressers and also stated that it was not possible to break down the costs by individual EU Commissioner.
The answer from Commissioner Hahn comes just over a week after a disclosure that Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soder had spent €220,000 on photography services in 2022 alone. The government of Bavaria has a full-time photographer on staff who is said to make between 3,000 to 5,600 euros per month.
Soder was criticised by the Social Democrats (SPD) who requested the information. The party pointed out that his predecessor, Horst Seehofer, had spent far less on photography.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel was also recently revealed to have charged the taxpayers just under €55,000 for products and services to enhance her appearance since leaving office two years ago.
In the last decade, audits show that the European Union is no stranger to wasteful spending. In 2012, the European Court of Auditors claimed that there were errors in the allocation of around €5 billion worth of funds and while most were due to misunderstanding the EU’s rules, some were reportedly cases of fraud.
At the time, critics blamed the European Commission, with former UK Conservative MEP Martin Callanan stating it was ludicrous the Commission was demanding a 5% increase in the budget when they were not properly spending the current funds.
A decade later, in 2022, another damning report from the European Court of Auditors suggested that as much as 3% of the €181.5 billion budget had been spent irregularly.
“The level of error for high-risk expenditure was pervasive,” the auditors said in their report and highlighted around 15 cases of potential fraud, a massive increase from the prior year in which only six potential cases were noted.
Members of the European Parliament were also involved in a corruption scandal dubbed “Qatargate,” involving allegations that suitcases full of money were sent to the Greek Vice President of the European Parliament, Eva Kaili, her partner Francesco Giorgi, and various people by the Qataris, and others, in exchange for influence in EU decision making.
Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó later slammed the European Parliament as a whole in February, calling it a corrupt organisation.
“The credibility of the European Parliament is practically zero,” he said and added, “the latest corruption issues have clearly shown that we are speaking about one of the world’s most corrupt organizations.”
