The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that figures showing the travel and daily allowance claims of Czech members of the European Parliament can remain secret, rejecting a bid to bring the spending data into the public domain.

The decision, handed down in Luxembourg, marks a setback for transparency campaigners who argued that taxpayers are entitled to see how individual lawmakers draw allowances on top of their parliamentary salaries. The court sided with the position that the figures should stay under wraps.

The case centred on requests for the travel and daily allowance figures of Czech deputies. Those seeking disclosure contended that the public interest in monitoring how elected representatives spend public money outweighed any privacy or institutional concerns. The court did not accept that argument.

At stake is a long-running tension inside EU institutions between budgetary openness and the protection of individual parliamentarians' data. The General Allowance, travel reimbursements and daily subsistence payments — currently worth hundreds of euros per sitting day for each MEP — together represent a substantial share of the Parliament's administrative budget. Until now, however, the breakdown of who claims what has remained largely invisible to the electorate.

The ruling leaves the status quo intact. European Parliament officials will not be required to publish itemised allowance records for the Czech members covered by the request, and by extension the judgment signals continued judicial tolerance for the same non-disclosure approach applied to members from other member states.

For practitioners, the judgment is a reminder that requests for granular financial data concerning individual MEPs face a high bar before the EU courts. Lawyers advising media organisations, NGOs and private citizens on access-to-document applications should note that the Court of Justice has now confirmed, in the specific context of Czech lawmakers' travel and daily allowances, that institutional and data-protection considerations can defeat disclosure. Any future litigation strategy will need to distinguish this case or identify a stronger public-interest override.

For the Czech deputies themselves, the outcome means their individual claims continue to be shielded from public view. For voters in the Czech Republic and across the Union, aggregate figures remain the only window into allowance spending that the Parliament publishes.

The ruling fits a broader pattern of EU case law in which the Court of Justice balances the transparency principles of Regulation 1049/2001 against the data-protection safeguards that apply to named individuals. Critics of that balancing exercise say it tilts too far toward secrecy around elected officials. Supporters say it protects parliamentarians from disproportionate exposure of personal financial information.

Whatever the normative view, the legal position is now clear: the figures stay confidential, the request fails, and the Parliament's current publication practice survives judicial scrutiny.

This report is based on headline information from the ruling as reported by Courthouse News; readers requiring the full case reference, chamber composition and operative wording of the judgment should consult the Court of Justice's official register directly once the decision is published there.