MEPs can no longer milk the EU dry

Choc! Horreur! MEPs' expenses are to be reformed! While British journalists scavenge through Westminster's relatively trivial peccadilloes, the European Parliament is finally getting around to addressing some truly gargantuan scams.

From next year, MEPs' travel will be reimbursed on the basis of costs actually incurred. You might ask how anyone could have resisted this notion but, for 30 years, MEPs voted to maintain a system whereby they were paid a first-class fare, plus a generous "kilometrage" allowance regardless of how they made the journey. Those who flew Easyjet could easily make £800 every week tax-free, since it counted as expenses rather than income.

Now comes reform of the £13,300-a-month staff allowance, which many MEPs pay to their wives. I wish I could tell you that this practice was confined to wily Continentals

but, in truth, Brits are among the worst offenders. As a French colleague once put it: "What is it about you English? You employ your wives and you sleep with your staff!"

It turns out, though, that hiring the missus officially is rather petite biere. The more expert fraudster sets up a front company, designates it as his or her "paying agent", and trousers the entire sum.

You might be wondering how these practices were ever allowed to develop in the first place. Two reasons. First, because the EU, embodying lofty ideals, tended to get the benefit of the doubt. Unaccustomed to criticism, its officials got into the habit of doing as they pleased. Second, because expenses bind MEPs into the project.

I've watched it happen: someone is elected on a more-or-less Eurosceptic platform but, as his lips clamp around the allowances teat, he finds all sorts of arguments for closer integration. Aware that his own house is made of flimsy crystal, the last thing he'll do is lob stones at the fraud-ridden EU budget. Clever, no?