German MPs earning big on the side

About a quarter of Germany's 630 Bundestag parliamentarians in the country's lower house, declared extra income of more than 1,000 euros ($1,100) in the current legislative period, according to an investigation by government watchdog abgeordnetenwatch.de. The report is based on numbers provided by parliamentarians for tax purposes directly.

There is, however, room for ambiguity, as parliamentarians are not required to provide specific numbers but rather only specify what bracket of additional income they make. The top bracket is for figures beyond 250,000 euros, with no upper ceiling. Abgeordnetenwatch.de said it used only the lowest amount in each bracket to calculate its sum of 18 million euros. Therefore, the actual number of additional earnings could potentially be as high as 33.6 million euros ($37,3 million).

The watchdog specified that six members of the Bundestag, put themselves in the top bracket for secondary income starting at 250,000 euros. The executive director of abgeordnetenwatch.de, Gregor Hackmack, said that it was unclear how much they could be making in the highest bracket.

"It is about time that parliamentarians account for all additional income, from the first euro to the last cent," Hackmack said.

Abgeordnetenwatch (meaning "Parliamentarian-watch") asked the Bundestag for comment but was denied, instead giving a statement saying that parliament couldn't respond to such "speculations."

German parliamentarians currently earn a gross income of roughly 9,300 euros per month ($10,300) for their work as politicians - that's more than double the average pre-tax income for a German household, not individual, based on 2014 figures.

Special treatment for some parliamentarians

Hackmack also complained that politicians with certain professional backgrounds did not even have to specify where their extra earnings came from. He said that politicians who were also lawyers, consultants and farmers were particularly likely to be allowed to withhold the sources of their secondary incomes received from undeclared or unknown sources, amounting to 3.3 million euros ($3.7 million) in total funds.

"Having our representatives being able to accept several millions in funds from unknown sources creates a gateway for lobbyists," Hackmack said. He also lamented, that of those Bundestag members not obliged to declare their additional earnings' sources, only a few actually did so, voluntarily.

Philipp Graf Lerchenfeld, of Bavaria's conservative CSU, who agreed to disclose all his sources of secondary income, topped the list of on-the-side earners, raking in 1.73 million euros since 2013's elections.

According to the watchdog's data, the majority of the top earners were politicians from Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) or its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

"The fact that some parliamentarians earn more with their side jobs, than Chancellor Angela Merkel does, is a scandal. In fact, we should now start having a public discussion on whether additional income for parliamentarians should be banned altogether," Hackmack said.

The more conservative the richer

Abgeordnetenwatch.de stressed that the CSU in particular had a high percentage of parliamentarians claiming additional sources of income, with 27 of its 56 Bundestag MPs making the list. The CDU had about 29 percent of its 255 parliamentarians claim secondary income, while 21 percent of 193 members from grand coalitions partners the Social Democrats (SPD) did the same.

Parliamentarians from the Green Party and the far-left Die Linke only featured at 17,5 and 14 percent respectively.

ss/msh (AFP, dpa)