Did the Parliament pay over the odds for its building in Sofia?

Yet another European Parliament spending decision  has come under scrutiny. A decision to pay €9 million for a joint Parliament-European Commission representation office in downtown Sofia has provoked questions about value for money. 

Bulgarian media claim the price paid for three-quarters of the Rakovsky Business Centre was too high, in view of the decline in the city’s real-estate market. The cost of the modern glass and steel building – which will become the latest ‘House of Europe’ representation housing both Parliament and Commission officials – is being met entirely by the Parliament, because the Commission has no budget right now for the 60% of the building it had agreed to buy, and will instead pay off its debt to the Parliament at €350,000 a year.

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Monika Hohlmeier, a German centre-right MEP who is responsible for the Parliament’s buildings policy on the budgets committee, defended the purchase. She said that MEPs had rejected the initial asking price of €11.5m and a subsequent proposed deal of €10m.

She said an independent valuation that the Parliament commissioned had suggested a value between €8.25m and €9m, and the committee agreed on 3 March to approve the purchase for €8.25m, plus renovation costs of nearly €800,000. A report by the Parliament’s infrastructure and buildings department said there was “no comparative market price…available” at the time to assess the value.