Declaration of Financial Interests

Read Diana's Declaration of Financial Interests for the Year 2007.

Salary and Pension

MEPs receive a basic salary paid by the parliaments or governments of the various Member States, which is subject to the tax rules of the country in question.

The amount of this allowance is equal to the amount of the national parliamentary allowance, less any additional allowances to which Members of national parliaments may be entitled.

As of 1 April 2007, Diana Wallis' salary is £60,675 per year. It is the same as that of a British MP and is subject to the same British tax rules.

Before entering the Parliament, Diana Wallis was a senior solicitor with more than 15 years' experience in this profession. The current average starting salary for solicitors in private practice is £42000 (source: Law Society 2007 fact sheet).

Basic pension arrangements for British MEPs and MPs are identical. Diana Wallis is not and has never been a member of the European Parliament's additional Voluntary Pension Scheme.

These rules as subject to change in July 2009, when the Statute for Members enters into force.

Read the Statute for Members of the European Parliament.

Expenses paid for by the European Parliament

MEPs' expenses are paid for directly by the European Parliament. The conversion rate from Euros used here is that of 30 January 2008.

Members are entitled to a travel and subsistence allowance in respect of the days on which they participate in meetings of official Parliament bodies. Such participation must be attested by signing either the attendance register open in the meeting room, or, during part-sessions in Strasbourg and Brussels, the attendance register in the Chamber.

Diana Wallis' total allowance for travel in 2007 was £41,558.4. This includes weekly travel to and from Strasbourg (twelve times a year) and Brussels, and travel and hotel on delegations and speaking engagements around Europe and beyond. It also includes the use of taxis. Here is a list of some of these conferences Diana spoke at in 2007: Ljubliana (Civil law - University), Riga (New Neighbourhood policy), Georgia USA (Rome II and EU-US relations), Rome (Bar European Group annual conference), Stuttgart (Contract law), Muenster (Contract law), Trier (Alternative Dispute resolution), Brussels (Debt collecting), Prague (Personal injury law), Strasbourg (Euroculture students programme), Paris (Private international law), Vienna (United Nations and contract law), Brighton (direct democracy), Trier (Better law-making), London (Civil justice day), Liverpool (School of Politics), London (National liberal club), London (College of law), London (Comparative law).

In 2007, Diana Wallis received a further £26,200.1 as a daily subsistence allowance to cover accommodation in Brussels and Strasbourg. This equates to £207.53 per day of participation in meetings of official Parliament bodies (as at 1 January 2007).

Members receive a flat-rate allowance of £35,221.4 per year (as at 1 January 2007) which is chiefly intended to cover office management expenditure, phone bills, postage, the purchase, management and use of IT equipment, and travel by Members within their own Member State. In accordance with the LDEPP Guidance Note on Use of Members' Allowances, an independent annual account of this allowance covering the year 2008 will be produced early in 2009 . In addition, an account for the year 2007 is currently being prepared and will be posted shortly.

Each Member is entitled to a parliamentary assistance allowance to cover expenses arising out of the employment or use of the services of one or more assistants whom the Member may choose. The parliamentary assistance allowance for 2007 was £138,315 per year of which Diana Wallis has left a total of £16,180.41 unclaimed. This money was used to pay salaries and expenses of 1 full-time and 1 part-time assistant in the constituency; 1 full-time and 1 part-time assistant in Brussels; and 1 further assistant working between the two locations. One of Diana's assistants is her husband Stewart Arnold (please see her Declaration of Financial Interests for 2007 above). He is employed on a salary band of £15-20,000 gross for the UK 2007 tax year. Finally, in 2007, the full-time assistant's post in Brussels was replaced following an open appointment process which attracted more than 400 applicants.

During the course of the year, Diana Wallis also used this allowance to pay 2 trainees from Hull University and to reimburse the travel costs of 3 interviewees as part of the open appointment process. She also has a further Brussels-based assistant specifically assigned to assist her in her responsibility as a Vice President of Parliament who is paid directly by Parliament as a temporary agent.

Diana Wallis' staff's salaries are not dealt with by herself. Rather, they are handled either by an independent Brussels notary or an independent paying agent in the constituency who receive the allowance from Parliament, make payments to staff, and produce a yearly account to Parliament's services.

Read the LDEPP Guidance Note on Use of Members' Allowances.

Parliament's official page on allowances.

Access to Documents

Article 1 of the EU Treaty states that "decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen." This is supplemented by a number of provisions, including Article 25(1) of the EC Treaty which ensures that "any citizen of the Union, and any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a Member State, shall have a right of access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents", subject to certain defined exceptions. In 2001, the Parliament and Council adopted a Regulation which sets out the right of access in more details. This Regulation is currently undergoing a review process following the publication of a Green Paper by the Commission.

On 2 October 2007, Diana Wallis chaired, as Vice President responsible, a meeting of the interinstitutional committee on access to documents set up under Article 15 of Regulation 1049/2001. This was the first meeting of the committee in three years.

Read Regulation 1049/2001 regulating the right of access to documents.

Read the Commission's Green Paper on Public Access to Documents.

Read the Commission's recast proposal for Regulation 1049.

List of documents related to a hearing in the LIBE Committee on 2 June 2008.

Search for a document in the European Parliament's official register.

Search for a document in the Commission's official register.

Search for a document in the Council's official register.

Transparency and Lobbying in the European Institutions

On 17 July, Diana called on lobbyists to join transparency register:

"If the Commission's register is to properly serve its purpose, we need registration across the board from interest representatives.

The Commission's register was opened on 23 June 2008. To date, 174 organisations have registered with the Commission, providing a certain amount of financial disclosure. Only 9 public affairs consultancies have registered with the Commission. The bulk of registrants are professional organisations and NGOs.

"It is very surprising to note that a vast majority of public affairs consultancies have so far refrained from registering.

"If such significant interest representatives remain voluntarily outside of the register and its modest financial dislosure requirements, then I have no doubt that the Parliament will strongly repeat calls for a mandatory common register - one which also includes the Council."

"All interest representatives must realise that it is in their interests to work transparently, and I will certainly be encouraging them to do so on an individual basis, as and when they approach me."

The Commission's register of interest representatives (now online).

Read Diana's draft Opinion on Lobbying.

Read the Commission's follow-up communication on the European Transparency Initiative.

Read the Commission's Green Paper on a European Transparency Initiative.

Historical Archives

Click here to access Diana's page on the opening of Parliament's archives.

Contact details for the Parliament's Archives and Documentation Center (Luxembourg).

Correlation Tables

Diana Wallis has long fought for "correlation tables". These should be sent by Member States when transposing Community directives, so as to ensure transparency and to make the Commission's watchdog task possible. So far, such clauses are systematically deleted at the request of the Council during the codecision procedure. It is however noteworthy that the Environmental Crime Directive, agreed in first reading last month, contains an obligation to produce correlation tables (see Article 9(2) : "Member States shall communicate to the Commission the text of the main provisions of national law which they adopt in the field covered by this Directive and a correlation table between those provisions and this Directive").

Click here to see Parliament's first reading of the Environmental Crime Directive.

ALDE Transparency Campaign.

Citizens' Summaries

Following several opinions and reports drafted by Diana and approved by the Parliament, Commissioner Wallstrom committed the Commission to implement such tables. The matter is largely unresolved, although certain parts of the Commission produce summaries (although not forming part of legislation).

One of the recommendations of the Equitable Life Inquiry report (adopted by the European Parliament on 19 June 2007) reads:

"The committee stresses the importance of improving citizens' understanding of EC legislation and therefore calls for the introduction in all legislative proposals of executive or citizens' summaries, as used in some Member States1, which, although devoid of any legal effects, would form part of the act itself and constitute a non-technical explanation destined to citizens and other interested parties (...)."

Read a related publication from the Plain Language Commission.

26 June: Read the Commission's citizens' summary on the European Private Company Statute.

Read a recent document entitled "Citizens' Summary" released by DG Competition .