By Tim Franks BBC Europe correspondent

Listen carefully and you can hear the sound of sniggering across Brussels - the talk is, appropriately enough, about a new perk.

Members of the European Commission and European parliament are seemingly entitled to heavily subsidised doses of the anti-impotence drug, Viagra.

Let's keep things in proportion, these stories are really over the top

Jean-Christophe Filori Commission enlargement spokesman

The commission is keen to rebut charges of freeloading but is also trying not to sound too testy.

The unfortunate Commission spokesman on duty told the BBC that he was ready to "see the fun" along with everybody else.

He insisted that he had a sense of humour, but that the story was "pathetic".

Only 10 claimants

The commission says no more than 10 people are claiming Viagra out of the 85,000 who work for the commission or parliament.

Their impotence has to be the result of acute disease or conditions such as diabetes.

If they take their allowance of six pills a month for a year, that would account for just 0.004% of the cost of the EU insurance scheme.

To say that taxpayers were funding Eurocrats' sex lives was, the spokesman said, blown out of proportion.

August is traditionally a time of torpor in the political and bureaucratic heart of Europe.

Today, at least, spirits have been raised.