Clean Europe

By GRAHAM WATSON

The European Parliament has made headlines recently with a potent mix of lobbyists' activities and revelations of financial irregularities. As the legislative body's size and influence have grown, so too have public demands for increasing financial probity and transparency.

Parliamentarians need and welcome input from affected stakeholders. The question is when does an expert opinion become undue influence on policy? Critics say lobbyists lack transparency and hold too much sway over lawmaking.

Parliament is currently seeking to update and regulate the access of the 15,000 Brussels-based lobbyists to MEPs in response to a European Commission initiative on improved transparency of EU lawmaking. It seems likely that EU institutions will stick to the present voluntary register for the time being.

Parliament is calling for a more rigorous approach. It seeks agreement with the Commission on a common mandatory register that would be applicable in all EU institutions and include full financial disclosure, a common mechanism of expulsion from the register and a common code of ethical behavior. This one-stop-shop would make things simpler for lobbyists whilst improving transparency.

Separately, a recent internal audit report that was leaked to the press has shed light on serious weaknesses in the transparency and accountability of the use of the allowances available to the 785 MEPs to employ staff. Under the current rules, each MEP can claim about €16,000 ($24,912) a month to pay his or her staff.

None of the practices catalogued in the audit report is strictly speaking illegal. But many, such as paying undue bonuses or diverting funds intended to employ staff into their own pockets, are unethical and an abuse of the trust that must be implicit between politicians and their electorate.

In a political institution made up of 27 nationalities there are different cultural attitudes toward such matters as the employment of relatives. In the U.S. this is frowned upon, as it is in Germany or Denmark. Other countries, such as the U.K., tolerate it as long as there is transparency about who is working for whom and that the relatives are actually doing the work they are paid for.

Doubts have also been raised about the misuse of other perks and allowances covering foreign travel and office expenditure. Such revelations chip away at the legitimacy and reputation of the Parliament.

Part of the problem, though, lies in the enormous discrepancy in basic salaries between lawmakers. The accession of countries from Central and Eastern Europe, where salaries are a fraction of those in older member states, has only increased that gap. Italian MEPs, for example, receive a basic salary that is almost ten times higher than that of their Lithuanian or Latvian colleagues.

Under the previous presidency of Pat Cox (a Liberal Democrat), MEPs agreed in July 2005 on a common salary for parliamentarians as of July 2009. As part of the deal, Parliament would overhaul its allowance systems to open them to more scrutiny and to avoid abuse. Successive attempts to implement these changes have stalled. The latest criticism should have signaled to even the least enthusiastic reformers in the house that we can no longer ignore public concerns.

Participation in European Parliament elections has fallen consistently since the first direct elections, with average turn-out down to 45.6% in 2004 from 63% in 1979. If this trend is to be arrested and possibly reversed, politicians have no choice but to approve a system that provides equal remuneration to all members but also allows for greater public scrutiny of the spending of public money.

There is an additional reason why Parliament must raise its game. It has the power to approve or refuse the way the annual EU budget, currently some €120 billion, is being spent. If Parliament is unable to put its own house in order then it lays itself open to charges of hypocrisy when criticizing the European Commission, which disburses most of the budget.

Last month, Parliament signed off on the 2006 accounts despite concerns of weak controls over 12% of regional development fund spending, some €4 billion. Parliament's public accounts committee has put considerable pressure on the Commission in recent weeks to recover all misspent money and get tougher with member states that persistently breach the rules. The pressure worked. Member states are henceforth required to produce annual declarations and summaries of audits on their use of EU funds for infrastructure, environmental or social projects. Parliament's hand would have been strengthened, however, were there not a cloud hanging over its own accounting lapses.

The European Union is looking ahead to an institutional rebirth next year under reforms to be introduced by the new Lisbon Treaty. It's supposed to prepare the EU for the political challenges of the 21st century, streamline its institutional structure and increase the powers of scrutiny of the European Parliament. MEPs have a political and moral obligation to rise to the occasion.