Status: 10/18/2022 5:46 p.m
Stricter transparency rules have applied to members of the Bundestag since June 2021. They must report their additional income precisely. Their information is to be published next week – albeit with a considerable delay.
The Bundestag wants to publish the exact additional income of the MPs in the coming week. The 736 MPs have to indicate in euros and cents how much they earn in addition to their work as MPs. You now have to report additional income from 1,000 euros a month or 3,000 euros a year to the President of the Bundestag. Before that, the annual limit was 10,000 euros.
MEPs are no longer allowed to accept monetary donations and are not allowed to work as lobbyists for money. The new disclosure requirements also stipulate that Members of Parliament who hold shares in corporations or partnerships must report these from five percent, whereas it used to be 25 percent. They will also be published. Income from such participations such as dividends or profit distributions must be disclosed as well as stock options.
Suspicion of paid influence
The Bundestag passed the stricter transparency rules in June last year in response to the so-called mask affair and amended the Members’ Act accordingly. In the spring of 2021, several Union MPs resigned from the Bundestag.
It was about commissions for the procurement of corona protective masks and the suspicion of paid influence in favor of the Caucasus Republic of Azerbaijan.
A lot of effort in IT
The deadline for this information had already expired on January 26th. The Bundestag administration wants to start with the data of the first MPs. The administration said it was not yet possible to foresee when the information from all parliamentarians would be available on the Bundestag’s website.
According to the Bundestag administration, the delay until autumn is due to the fact that the processing of the information is much more extensive and time-consuming than before due to the tightened rules. In addition, the implementation provisions for the new rules were initially missing. And the required databases still had to be adapted.