… Or have we tried to since only one of them, Diana Wallis (ALDE), answered to our questions. Nor Nirj Deva (ECR) neither Martin Schulz (S&D) took the time to tell us more on their position regarding transparency issues and ethics within the Parliament and broadly speaking EU institutions.

Mr Schulz, the president to be elected, is not the last one to deplore the so called “democratic deficit”of the EU and the existing gap between the citizens and EU institutions [1]; yet his non answer leaves us dubious on his real commitment as EP President regarding transparency and ethics within EU institutions.

More than words – or their absence (we know that candidates are assiled by request during their campaigns) – the acts of the upcoming EP President will be what make it possible for us to measure his commitment towards transparency and, even more, European democracy. In this respect, there are several the challenges on the agenda of this second term, from the implementation fo the MEPs Code of Conduct to the access to EU official documents to name but two current issues, and we will be extremely sharp in monitoring them.

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Diana Wallis (ALDE)

We thus have asked three questions on transparency and ethics within EU institutions to the three candidates. Here are the   Nous avons donc posé aux candidats à la présidence du Parlement européen trois questions sur la transparence et l’éthique au sein des institutions de l’UE. Voici donc les réponses de Diana Wallis (ALDE), MM. Schulz et Deva n’ayant pas répondu à nos sollicitationsDo you consider that the European Parliament is a sufficiently transparent institution and why?

Despite the cash for amendments scandal, or perhaps because of it, 2011 was a good year for Transparency in the European Parliament.  Thanks to the new Code of Conduct for MEPs, which came into force on Jan 1st 2012, the European Parliament is set to become an example for other European national Parliaments. Only yesterday [12/01/2012 - Editor’s note] I was approached by Estonians who are speaking about following our lead. The outgoing President Jerzy Buzek, and myself, were among other MEPs sat on a specific working group, determined to use the best examples across Europe as a model for our new Code of Conduct. An overwhelming 619 MEPs voted for this in December 2011 (with only 2 votes against).

(See: EP Rules of Procedure)

Other legislatures in Europe are also looking to our lead on the joint Transparency Register with the European Commission, established in June 2011. This register is growing in strength despite its nature as a voluntary system. The Council is the missing institution, and we have to put pressure on them to join in during the Danish Presidency.

(See website of EP & EC joint register for Brussels-based interest representatives)

The European Parliament has perhaps to be more innovative than other institutions when it comes to transparency, in order to take account of its special nature and legal status. It has proved with the above cases to be an institution that can make changes in the right direction when needed.

As a president, which measure(s) would you take so as to increase transparence and ethics within the European Parliament?

Open up the decision making in the Parliament Bureau – making agendas and other documents available to MEPs ahead of the meetings, and summaries of decisions straight after the meetings. This would help to dismiss the apparent secrecy that shrouds internal decision making and job appointments.

Allow MEPs to debate the issue of the Parliament’s seat.

Publish a list of members of the President’s cabinet, and appoint specific staff to respond to the Members of this House.

Remain an accessible President who eats breakfast in the canteen, and goes to group meetings and committee meetings regularly.

Transparency is linked to participation, to ensure the possibility of involvement of citizens in the European policy making process. Therefore I want to ensure that Parliament has a higher presence and visibility in all of the Member States and not just in the corridors of government. I would want to focus ‘official’ visits on the essential, but to use each one also to meet with citizens groups and to highlight the impact of EU legislation on daily life.

I would challenge each of our policy committee to hold one hearing or meeting a year in another Member State so that our work is more understood.

I also want to see a step change in our relationship with national parliaments, this should become a natural issue by issue working relationship, where together we can much more effectively hold the executive to account, be it the Commission or national governments.

These are just an example of my ideas coming from 5 years experience as a Vice President of Parliament.

More generally, how could the EU improve transparency among its institutions and functioning?

The key issue is to get the Council and the member states to open up their decision making process more and to join the Transparency Register, that would be a key goal. Overall I would like to see 2013 the Year of the European Citizen truly galvanise our efforts to show that being a European bring added value, bring real benefits and is a place where everyone can have influence on the big transnational issues through the European Parliament.

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,626815-2,00.html

The debate on the access to official documents opposes the European Parliament to the Commission and the Council: explications of the ins and outs of a core debate of transparency.

The article 15.3 of the Lisbon Treaty entered into force on December 1st, 2009 specifies: “any citizen of the Union [...] shall have a right of access to documents of the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies, whatever their medium”. Concretely, this aims at ensuring a free access to official documents of European institutions, bodies and agencies (while only the Parliament, the Council and the Commission were concerned until then).

The practical details of the implementation of this disposal divide the Commission and the Parliament. The former considers that no legal framework can be applied to all the EU institutions while according to the latter, the Treaty disposals are directly applicable. The Commission therefore proposed a regulation (COM(2008)0229) meant to make EU legislation in compliance with the Lisbon Treaty. The report (“Cashman Report”, named after its rapporteur) debated in December 2011 in the European Parliament aimed at amending this proposal and underlined the diverging positions of the EU institutions.

Which “documents” are we talking about?

The range of the institutions concerned by this regulation is a first point of disagreement between the Parliament on the one hand, the Commission and the Council on the other hand:

Commission Proposal (COM(2008)0229): “public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents” (title)

Parliament Report (adopted on December, 15^th, 2011): “right of access to documents of Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies” (amendment 1)

The Parliament thus supports a wider accessibility of official documents, what is confirmed by the 12^th amendment of the Cashman report: while the Commission calls for “a wider access” (recital 12), the Parliament mentions “a full access”. The opponents of the “full access” (Commission, Council, EPP MEPs) claim that the cost of such a measure is disproportionate in comparison with the gains in terms of transparency and democracy (pushing forward the fact that lobbying offices would benefit from this measure more than citizens would do).

The definition of what a “document” is constitutes another point of dissension:

Commission Proposal (COM(2008)0229):  (a) “document” means any content whatever its medium (written on paper or stored in electronic form or as a sound, visual or audiovisual recording) drawn-up by an institution and formally transmitted to one or more recipients or otherwise registered, or received by an institution; data contained in electronic storage, processing and retrieval systems are documents if they can be extracted in the form of a printout or electronic-format copy using the available tools for the exploitation of the system; (article 3)

Parliament Report (adopted on December, 15^th, 2011): (a) “document” shall mean any data content whatever its medium (written on paper or stored in electronic form or as a sound, visual or audiovisual recording) concerning a matter falling within the sphere of responsibility of a Union institution, body, office or agency. Data contained in electronic storage, processing and retrieval systems, including external systems used for the institution’s work, constitute a document, notably if they can be extracted using any reasonably available tools for the exploitation of the system concerned. An institution, body, office or agency that intends to create a new electronic storage system, or to substantially change an existing system, shall evaluate the likely impact on the right of access, ensure that the right of access as a fundamental right is guaranteed, and act so as to promote the objective of transparency. The functions for the retrieval of information stored in electronic storage systems shall be adapted in order to satisfy requests from the public; (amendment 30)

The definition of the Parliament is broader than that of the Commission and it includes any institution, body or agency’s production regardless of its format (paper, electronic, audiovisual).

If, following the Commission, the Parliament proposal specifies that there can be exceptions; it adds that these should be strictly controlled and restricted to matters of public security or intellectual property rights, unless there is an “overriding public interest in disclosure”. In addition, the Cashman report calls for a standardisation of the classification of internal documents of all EU institutions so as to make this classification clearer.

According to the NGO access-info.org, the Parliament Report is a good one, for it “strikes the right balance between EU institutions’ “Space to think” and transparency of the legislative process required by the Lisbon Treaty” [1]… But all stakeholders do not agree on this point.

What will this report become?

From the beginning of 2012, it will be the subject of talks between the Parliament, the Commission and the Council so that these three institutions reach an agreement… what will not be an easy task.

In spite of the interest of Danish authorities for transparency issues, the Commission and the Council remain extremely cautious regarding data accessibility. According to Michael Cashman (UK), the rapporteur of this report, the Council is reluctant to go further and does not want to make more effort than those made in 2001. He adds that the Council supports the introduction of a veto on the documents from third parts (ie Member States), what the Parliament report firmly rejects. As for the Commission, Maroš Šefčovič, commissioner for inter-institutional relations and administration, already mentioned during December debate that the Commission couldn’t  accept many of the changes proposed by the report and that an “agreement [risked] taking time”.

The adoption of the Cashman report will not immediately enable a better access to EU official documents, instead it opens a new phase of negotiations between EU institutions. To be continued…

[1] http://www.access-info.org/en/european-union/211-european-parliament-adopts-proposals-t-improve-eu-transparency-rules

[2] http://www.europolitique.info/preprod/le-pe-s-oppose-au-conseil-et-la-commission-c-est-l-impasse-art319405-71.html.

Among the main topics on the Summit agenda: the crisis of the Eurozone and the question of visa liberalization. Among the main concerns of the MEPs: the respect of fundamental rights in Russia and the consistency of the elections.

Find our detailed analysis of the debate which took place at the European Parliament during December Session, before the 28th EU-Russia Summit.

Active ageing, maternity leave, coordination of social security, pensions and professional qualification: these are the keywords we have searched in the official documents provided by the European Parliament, compiled and analyzed thanks to the method we have developed. More specifically, we aimed at examining the frequency and density of the works and debates concerning each of these keywords.

To resume the main findings of this study, we note a significant gap between the number of occurrences of the five keywords: pensions are, by far, ranking at the top position (mentioned in 580 documents), followed by professional qualification (282 documents), maternity leave (101), active ageing (85) and coordination of social security (26).

The number of actors very involved differs significantly from one topic to another, depending on the topics addressed. Some correlations are nevertheless to be underlined: for instance, the most active people on pensions issues are also the most active on the theme of professional qualification. On average, almost 50% of the parliamentarians who have mentioned one the keywords analyzed have been particularly active in the works and debates regarding this theme.

To find out more about this study, you can download the full analysis.

Parlorama, specialised in political monitoring of legislative assemblies throughout Europe, welcomes the European Parliament’s decision to release information on MEPs’ expenditures. Disclosure and transparency are highly valued principles for open democracy initiatives wherein Parlorama is highly active.

The European Parliament has finally decided to publish the Galvin Report, named after the auditor investigating payments made to parliamentary assistants during the previous legislative term (2004-2009). The report is based on a sampling of 167 out of 2686 payments made in 2004.

On 7 June 2010, the Court of Justice of the European Union overruled the European Parliament’s decision whereby the Parliament refused to disclose information on spending to an Irish journalist, Mr Ciarán Toland. The report received a large degree of media coverage in 2008 after the publication of Chris Davies’ comments, a British MEP.

Thus, it is through external pressure that the European Parliament has decided to put the document online, despite its availability on WikiLeaks. Although Parlorama welcomes the decision, it is also disappointed that “personal data” will not be part of the publication due to the fact that, in certain cases, the management of public funds can be linked to embezzlement. The case of the Europarliamentarian who made a single payment of €200,000 to his supposed girlfriend is an example of the necessity to include “personal data” in order to hold MEPs accountable to such spending and to public scrutiny.

The new Statute for Members and Assistants, put in place this legislative term, does provide some level of a response mechanism through its introduction of controls. Nevertheless, there are still numerous holes in the system. Only the explicit publication of all expenditures will set a limit to be able to identify misappropriation and misuse.

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For further information on Parlorama, please do not hesitate to contact us at

contact@parlorama.eu and see our website www.parlorama.eu.

Download the press release