The European Parliament in Strasbourg | Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images EU court backs Parliament refusal to disclose MEP spending Verdict branded ’embarrassing’ by journalist who brought the case.

The European Parliament is under no obligation to disclose how its members spend expense allowances totalling more than €100 million per year, the General Court of the European Court of Justice said in a ruling Tuesday.

The verdict comes three years after a group of investigative journalists asked the EU court to examine the legality of the Parliament’s refusal to hand over information on travel expenses, subsistence allowances, general expenditure allowances and staffing arrangements expenses, which MEPs receive on top of their salaries.

The court on Tuesday "confirmed the Parliament's refusal" to make this information public, citing privacy concerns.

"Since all the documents requested contain information concerning identified natural persons (namely MEPs), the mere fact that those personal data are closely linked to public data on those persons does not mean that those data cannot be characterized as personal data," the court said.

The verdict will allow Parliament to continue to refuse to disclose how MEPs spend a controversial allowance of €4,416 per month — known as the “general expenditure allowance” — that MEPs receive as a lump sum in addition to their regular pre-tax monthly salary of €8,611. MEPs are not required to provide any proof of how the money is spent.

The case was brought to the EU court in 2015 by a consortium of investigative journalists called "The MEPs Project," which filed legal complaints after they were refused access to documents on allowances. The group last year published a report detailing widespread abuse of the system among MEPs.

The Parliament has argued that giving full access to these allowances would contradict data protection rules and add more burden for the administration to check receipts to see where the money goes.

“While MEPs should enjoy privacy in their private lives, they are employed by the people and for the people, who are entitled to know how public resources are spent,” the journalists said in a statement published at the time.

During a court hearing last year, the Parliament dismissed the journalists’ 2015 request for information citing data protection concerns and “an excessive burden” to provide them with the documents in question. It also argued MEPs risked facing so much criticism they would struggle to do their job.

In its Tuesday verdict, the court said it shares the view that "the redaction of all personal data in the documents requested meant an excessive administrative burden having regard to the volume of documents requested (more than four million documents for all requests)."

Anuška Delić, a Slovenian journalist and one of the complainants, said she would appeal the court’s decision.

"The EU Court of Justice's decision is embarrassing and — combined with the clearly demonstrated unwillingness of MEPs to have their expenses audited — plays directly into the hands of EU skeptics,” Delić told POLITICO. "It shows that the only elected representatives of EU citizens, the MEPs, are a class of their own and do not answer to anyone, least of all the public.”

"Public spending of MEPs should be open to public scrutiny just like almost any public expense, except the military or intelligence services,” she added.

Delić noted that the court appeared to have "copy-pasted" the Parliament's arguments, adding: "One of our main arguments — that the documents we are requesting are not personal data of the MEPs — was completely overlooked by the Court."

Campaigners claim a lack of transparency about MEPs' allowances contributes to an image of the Parliament as opaque and bureaucratic.

Transparency International EU called the decision "hugely disappointing."

Earlier this year, MEPs rejected modest proposals to introduce some accountability into the way legislators can use the general expenditure allowance.

A plan to reform the allowance for MEPs — spearheaded by Antonio Tajani, the Parliament president — has been in the works for a number of months and is separate from Tuesday's verdict.

"Now the ball is in the Parliament's court to bring about more accountability around expenses," said Heidi Hautala, vice president of the Greens/EFA Group, which has called on MEPs to keep receipts of their spending and return unspent money at the end of their mandate.

This article has been updated.