An official figure that forces a target review
Parliament is not merely a sum of seats. It legislates, scrutinises government, evaluates public policy and represents citizens. A saving is therefore meaningful only if amendment, scrutiny and expert capacity remain intact. Cutting resources in a way that makes elected members more dependent on the administration they are meant to scrutinise would be a false economy.
The Senate’s 2025 accounts document a total catering subsidy of €987,160. This shows that a national €12 million target cannot be validated by extrapolating the Senate alone: a comparable National Assembly cost is required, distinguishing services for parliamentarians, staff and operational obligations. [1]
For that reason, this chapter separates three layers: resources directly attached to mandates, collective resources needed to operate the chamber, and durable infrastructure. Only the first layer varies quickly with member numbers; the second varies partly; the third is largely fixed in the short term. This prevents a total institutional budget from being converted into a supposed saving by simple division.
Separate members’ meals from employee catering
Parliament enjoys administrative and budget autonomy, but this does not prevent internal rules on pricing, transparency and subsidy neutrality. Reform can be implemented by chamber bureaux and quaestors with full-cost disclosure rather than through a broad national statute. [1][2][3]
The legal vehicle shown in the historical corpus remains a reference point, but it is not copied without review. The chapter uses the level of law actually required: Constitution, organic law, ordinary statute, decree, chamber rule or management decision. This hierarchy matters because a misclassified reform can waste months in an unnecessary procedure or become legally fragile because an instrument of insufficient rank was chosen.
Each step must produce verifiable evidence; a missing step remains an assumption.
Price the service without abolishing the tool
The principle should be that prices paid cover at least the avoidable cost of private consumption, while staff collective catering remains available under applicable social rules and the constraints of late sittings. Subsidies attributable to members, employees and security requirements should be disclosed separately. [1][3]
Implementation should be written before the rule takes effect: starting position, target rule, responsible authority, date, temporary exemptions, data to publish and control mechanism. The historical lead is National Assembly / Senate, but the same actor should not produce all figures and certify its own result. A second line of review — Parliament, Court of Accounts, inspectorate, court or open data — must be able to reproduce the calculation.
Reproducibility is central to the Delta-Sierra approach. Readers should be able to move back from the conclusion to the starting data, understand assumptions and identify what still depends on a political choice. A reform can be ambitious without pretending all of its parameters are already known.
Why €12 million is not yet demonstrated
The €12 million figure must remain an estimate requiring consolidation until both chambers publish comparable accounting. Savings equal the subsidy reduction actually achieved after price adjustments minus contractual or employment-related extra costs. The Senate figure is an anchor, not a national total. [1][2][3]
The calculation must distinguish a voted budget, executed expenditure and an assumption. An appropriation is not always fully spent; executed expenditure is not always avoidable; a behavioural estimate does not carry the same confidence as audited accounts. The final report should therefore assign a confidence level to each component and publish a range where the evidence does not support greater precision.
The Institutions block also contains strong interactions. Reducing parliamentarian numbers automatically affects some staff credits; abolishing a body may reduce support functions already counted elsewhere; capping pay can affect an allowance addressed by another measure. The financial ledger must assign every cash flow to one unique owner so double counting is impossible.
Harmonise accounting across both chambers
The reference timetable has four stages. Stage 1 — zero baseline: freeze headcount, contracts, allowances, property, services, legal texts and indicators before reform. Stage 2 — rule and preparation: adopt the instrument, publish instructions and adapt systems. Stage 3 — transition: allow commitments to expire or transfer while respecting rights and service continuity. Stage 4 — stabilisation: measure a full twelve months on a constant perimeter.
Transition is not a footnote. It can include compensation, staff mobility, redistricting, IT adaptation, contract termination, property reassignment or training. Those costs belong in the dashboard because a reform with a high initial cost may still be worthwhile if recurring savings repay it; the reverse is also true.
Do not confuse restraint with dysfunction
Removing on-site catering altogether would be counterproductive when sittings run late or security constraints restrict movement. Reform should target unjustified subsidy and pricing transparency, not the existence of an institutional catering service itself. [1][3]
A serious objection is used to design a safeguard. For Ending unjustified subsidies for parliamentary catering, at least three indicator families should therefore be published: an institutional or service indicator, a budget indicator and a risk indicator. If savings rise while quality collapses, the measure is not validated. If quality improves but cost is merely shifted, it is not validated either.
A review clause should be built in from the start. Twelve to eighteen months after stabilisation, Parliament or the designated controller should compare target, actual outcome and unintended effects. Deviations are not a documentary failure: they are precisely the information needed to correct a reform rather than preserve a figure that has become unrealistic.
What Parliament must still be able to do after reform
The toughest test is to simulate an ordinary parliamentary week after reform. Committees must still examine complex bills, hear administrations and experts, draft amendments, monitor budget execution and scrutinise ministers. The number of members or assistants is therefore not merely a financial denominator: it determines work capacity. The decision file should describe that capacity before and after, including available rapporteurs, average committee workload, examination times and access to independent expertise.
A second simulation should cover peak periods: the budget, a crisis, a very large bill, an inquiry or an institutional reform. An organisation can appear sufficient in calm periods yet saturate precisely when democratic scrutiny matters most. A reserve of capacity should therefore be retained and its cost acknowledged rather than counted as a saving that has to be recreated at the first crisis.
Finally, organisational parameters should be adjustable without making the institution politically unstable. A public review after a full cycle should be able to change committee resources, representation rules or resource ceilings if indicators show weakened scrutiny. Institutional restraint is valuable only if Parliament remains able to challenge, verify and correct the executive.
The evidence file to publish before the vote
Before the vote, a zero-baseline sheet should separate appropriations that genuinely vary with the number or activity of parliamentarians from expenditure that remains regardless of seat count: buildings, security, IT systems, archives, constitutional functions and part of the permanent workforce. This distinction turns a budget intuition into a reproducible calculation. Variable appropriations can then be recalculated under the proposed rule; fixed costs become savings only if an explicit decision also reduces them.
The file should also show institutional consequences that are not monetary. A smaller chamber changes workload per member, territorial representation, committee composition, minority access to functions and the volume of scrutiny of the executive. These dimensions should be measured before and after reform through public indicators; otherwise lower expenditure could conceal a loss of democratic capacity.
Finally, the costing must reconcile with the chamber’s executed accounts rather than a theoretical average cost per seat. The useful question is not “what does one parliamentarian cost on average?” but “which budget lines genuinely disappear when seat numbers change, when do they disappear, and which lines remain necessary?”. That matrix should accompany the legislation and be audited twelve months after stabilisation.
What must be demonstrated before retaining the 12 million euros per year target
The 12 million euros per year figure remains the Plan’s historical target here, not a budget receivable that has already been secured. To turn it into a bookable saving, the impact file should publish line by line: executed baseline expenditure, the share that can legally and operationally disappear, the year of disappearance, transition cost, expenditure taken over elsewhere and stabilised net saving. Where evidence is missing, the cell should remain open rather than being filled with an invisible assumption.
The proposed operational lead — National Assembly / Senate — should provide that reconciliation in a reusable format with source documents and formulae. External reviewers must be able to reproduce the calculation without requesting additional confidential material, or identify precisely which protected data are indispensable. The final number may therefore be lower, higher or temporarily zero: Delta-Sierra’s first requirement is traceability of the result and the absence of double counting with other measures in the block.
Open the technical appendix: evidence required before validating the costing
| Stage | Expected evidence | Timing | Treatment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zero baseline | Executed expenditure, headcount, contracts, allowances, property and directly related resources | Before legislation | Publish |
| Avoidable perimeter | Lines that genuinely cease, with date and legal basis | Impact assessment | Justify |
| Transition | Mobility, compensation, redistricting, IT, contracts and transfers | Year 1 | Separate from recurring |
| Transferred costs | Expenditure taken over by another administration or tier | Years 1–2 | Deduct |
| Net result | Recurring saving on a constant perimeter with confidence level | After 12 stable months | Audit |