Brussels, 07/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - MEPs from the “old” member states were more active than their counterparts from the “new” member states during the last legislative period of the European Parliament, according to a study published by VoteWatch on Tuesday 6 May.
Among the 15 old member states, Portuguese MEPs took the lion's share with an average of seven reports per member - a situation due to an “oddity of procedure”, VoteWatch states. Vital Moreira (S&D, Portugal), chair of the European Parliament's international trade committee, thus inherited the largest number of reports “because the unwanted reports (often of a technical nature) automatically fall to the chair of the committee”, VoteWatch explains.
As regards parliamentary reports adopted by the Parliament exclusively under the co-decision legislative procedure, it is the German MEPs who achieve the best results, followed by the Irish, Luxembourgish, British, Finnish and Swedish.
As was also the case in the 2004-2009 legislative period, Austrian MEPs were the most active in the number of roll-call votes at the plenary sessions, says VoteWatch, followed by the Slovaks and the Luxembourgish. (SP)