Sven Giegold

Transparency and integrity in the European Parliament: petition and start of negotiations next week

Conservatives, Social Democrats and Liberals are still blocking more lobby transparency and tougher integrity rules in the European Parliament. Meanwhile, more than 47,000 EU citizens support a petition to call on MEPs to lift the blockade against a reform of lobby transparency and integrity rules. Our petition had initially been launched in German and English. Then colleagues joined in French, Spanish, Catalan and Hungarian: https://www.change.org/eu-lobbytransparency

Coordinators in the Constitutional Affairs Committee confirmed yesterday, 20 October, that all transparency and integrity issues have to be discussed and voted first in the Corbett report on the general revision of the rules of procedure of the European Parliament. Only afterwards the initiative report ‘Transparency, Accountability and Integrity in the EU institutions’ covering also Commission and Council will be voted. A first shadow meeting on this report took place on the same day. The first key round of negotiations on the rules of procedure will take place on 27 October in Strasbourg.

 

We analysed the positions of all parliamentary groups at the start of negotiations as expressed in the amendments of EPP, S&D, ECR, ALDE, GUE, Greens and EFDD. You can find this revealing table here: Comparison_transparency_amendments_Corbett

It shows that EPP and ALDE demonstrate no willingness what so ever to toughen rules for transparency and integrity in the European Parliament.

 

The Green amendments can be found in our “Green plan for transparency and integrity in the European parliament”: https://sven-giegold.de/2016/green-plan-for-transparency-and-integrity-in-the-european-parliament/

No decision has been made so far who should negotiate on the interinstitutional agreement on the Transparency Register for lobbyists, since Commission published its draft on 28 September. This decision might be postponed until the European Parliament’s president and vice-presidents will have been reelected in January 2017.

 

I am standing ready to answer your additional questions.

 

Analysis of Conservative opposition to key demands of the initiative report on ‘Transparency, Accountability and Integrity’: https://sven-giegold.de/2016/conservatives-blocking-lobby-transparency-and-moves-to-sanction-conflicts-of-interest-in-the-european-parliament/

Start of the petition on 12 October: https://sven-giegold.de/2016/petition-to-increase-lobbying-transparency-and-stop-revolving-doors/

Analysis of the Commission proposal for an interinstitutional agreement on the Transparency Register: https://sven-giegold.de/2016/transparency-register-progress-on-lobby-transparency-but-many-loopholes-remain/

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