Angelika Niebler, head of the powerful center-right German delegation in the European Parliament, is being investigated for misusing EU funds, according to four parliamentary officials.
The European Parliament’s legal affairs committee will start discussing on Tuesday afternoon whether to lift the parliamentary immunity of Niebler — a member of the European People’s Party — following a request from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. A committee hearing with Niebler herself will follow, and a final decision is not expected for several months.
According to two of the four parliamentary officials, all granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive case, Niebler has been accused by EPPO of hiring assistants to chauffeur her from her hometown of Munich to Brussels and Strasbourg, as well as to private and business appointments not linked to her work as an MEP.
EPPO also alleges that she got her assistants in Brussels to carry out private chores not related to her work as a lawmaker, and hired an assistant in Germany using Parliament cash to work for a former MEP colleague.
The Parliament’s rules state that assistants can only help with parliamentary duties.
“The allegations are unfounded. I wish that the facts of the matter are clarified as quickly and completely as possible,” Niebler told POLITICO. “I will fully support this investigation.”
A spokesperson for EPPO said the organization would “neither comment, nor do we confirm which investigations we are working on. This is to not endanger the outcome of the possible investigation.”
MEPs get €30,769 a month to spend on staff, either in the Parliament in Brussels or in their local constituency office.
Niebler, a longtime MEP, is a member of the Christian Social Union, the sister party of the Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The CSU and CDU are part of the EU’s biggest political family, the EPP.
Since 2014, Niebler has co-led the CDU/CSU delegation in the Parliament along with Daniel Caspary, who is due to step down to join the European Court of Auditors at the end of the year.
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