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 By Bruno Waterfield, Brussels

Revelations over the rental and purchase of new buildings in the European Union quarter of the Belgian capital come ahead of elections to the assembly next year and risk a backlash against high-spending MEPs. 

The extra office space is to be purchased and rented for growing numbers of parliamentary assistants even though the number of MEPs will shrink from 766 to 751 after EU elections in May 2014. 

"This is an outrageous waste of taxpayers' money when the EU is demanding punishing cuts from ordinary households and national governments," said Paul Nuttall the deputy leader of Ukip. 

"As the profligate EU wants to expand its empire or project it continues to hire more Eurocrats and increase the size and expense of its Towers of Babel." 

Following questions from a Belgian MEP it has emerged that the EU assembly is to pay £77 million (€91.3bn) to rent an 11-storey office block on De Meeussquare, near to the Brussels seat of the parliament, for 12 years, money that will be spent without any prospect of owning the building. 

The rent comes on top of the purchase for £97 million (€114.6m) of the Trebel building which is also near the sprawling Place Luxembourg EU parliament complex, that has its own shops, post office, beauty parlours and train station. 

"It's probably the largest real estate transaction in Brussels this year," Jean-Michel Meersseman from property manager Jones Lang Lassalle told the Flemish Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper. 

A spokesman said that the assembly needed extra space because the Lisbon treaty had increased the "areas in which parliament needs to legistate" as well as Croatia joining the EU in July this year. 

"This increased the need for staff," she said. "Furthermore, MEPs indeed have the possibility to recruit more assistants and often also have trainees, all working in one single office. That is an untenable situation." 

The need to expand the parliament is to house growing numbers of staff, over 6,200 civil servants and 1,525 parliamentary assistants for MEPs, who receive an increased annual allowance of £220,000 a year to pay for personal staff. 

Philip Claeys, the Flemish Vlaams Belang MEP, whose parliamentary question exposed the expenditure, said: "The EU demands austerity, cuts and savings in all member states, but is clearly not willing to stop the waste of money for its own activities." 

Official figures show that EU institutions currently occupy over two million square metres of office space in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg, an area the same size as Monaco. 

The Organisation for European Inter-State Cooperation, a think-tank, has estimated that the EU's expenditure on buildings is £700 million this (€830m) this year alone. 

Ten days ago the parliament on began a £13.5 million (€16m) advertising campaign to try and persuade the public go to the polls in next year's European elections amid growing hostility to the EU. 

A 52-second video has already appeared in all 28 EU member states urging voters to "Act, React, Impact" and later election advertising will promise "this time it's different".