(STRASBOURG) - European deputies on Tuesday voted to ban themselves from hiring family members as assistants, following a report listing abuses of the system.

The European Union parliamentarians agreed that in future "MEPs may not employ members of their family".

To increase transparency and lessen the chances of the system being abused, the house also called for MEPs' service providers to be paid through a payment agency in each member state.

The decision, which must still be approved by the parliament's bureau -- its president plus the leaders of its political groups -- came after an internal audit listed a litany of apparent abuses of the system.

That report has been sent to the European fraud office OLAF but not made public. It is kept in a secure room in the Strasbourg parliament building with only a few MEPs allowed to see it.

However some of those have given details to the press or via websites, speaking of members suspected of cheating over taxes and social security.

There were examples where the 16,914 euros (26,960 dollars) available for Euro MPs to pay their assistants per month were directed to the accounts of service providers, some of which the report found to be at least dubious.

In one example, money had been sent to a day-care centre, and in another, to a service provider dealing with wood, according to Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde.

In another, an assistant received a Christmas bonus 19.5 times the size of his monthly salary, according to Bonde, who has seen the report which dates back to 2004.

Some 1,500 parliamentary assistants are accredited, but most MEPs also employ more assistants in their home countries.

It is not unusual for MEPs to openly employ their wives or children with no suggestion of fraud taking place. However the chamber, meeting in Strasbourg, decided that in the interests of transparency the practice should be ended.

The decision was part of the European Parliament's broader ratification of the EU's 2006 budget.

The MEPs called for the Belgian state to open talks with its fellow EU members to harmonise national laws on the matter.

At present it is illegal for members of some national parliaments, including Germany, to employ family members but perfectly legal elsewhere, including in France.

The parliament hopes the new rules will be able to come into effect by early 2009, ahead of the next European parliamentary elections.

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