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Berlin (dts news agency) – The budget for business trips by members of the German Bundestag for the financial year 2023 is exhausted after just a few months. This is reported by “Bild” (Saturday edition), citing a letter from Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) to the parliamentary groups.
According to this, 90 percent of the budget for business trips had already been spent or planned for on May 25. The Bundestag administration confirmed that the budget for business trips was “as of now, around 90 percent has been spent on completed business trips or planned for future business trips that have already been approved”. A total of around 4.14 million euros were planned for 2023 in the federal budget for parliamentary travel funds, of which 763,000 euros for individual business trips, 2,812,000 euros for delegation trips by committees and 567,000 euros for delegation trips by parliamentary groups. The travel costs for the current year are significantly higher than in previous years: from October 2019 to September 2021, only 1.87 million euros were planned for travel by MEPs.