The EU has again blocked the publication of MEPs’ expenses, with Euro-judges today quashing a three-year battle by journalists to get the documents published after the European Parliament itself previously refused to hand over any details. The judges in the ECJ’s sister court ruled that the Parliament was right not to publish the documents as it would enable the MEPs to be individually identified. That’s precisely the point…

Scandalously, MEPs will still be able to spend their annual €50,000 ‘General Expenditure Allowance’ – which they receive on top of their €100,000+ annual salary – without providing any proof of how the money of how the money was spent. MPs’ expenses were the political scandal of the decade in the UK – it’s just par for the course in Brussels…

So if the documents can’t be published because they would identify which MEPs are presently pouring your money down the drain, surely the EU will at least be making them available to the public in redacted form? Not so.

The European Court has blocked this too on the grounds that there wouldn’t be “any useful effect” in publishing the documents – precisely because they did not identify individual MEPs. Even Kafka’s worst nightmares can’t have come close to this…