Brussels, 07/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - There are procedural and legal limits to the means available to the European Parliament to sanction multinationals which have refused to attend hearings before the special TAXE committee, according to the President of the EP, Germany's Martin Schulz.
In mid-September, several MEPs called for the companies in question to be struck from the European transparency register and their access to the European Parliament to be restricted, or even suspended (see EUROPE 11389).
In a letter dated Monday 5 October from the President of the EP to the President of the TAXE committee, Alain Lamassoure of France, Schulz explains that the EU transparency register is established with the European Commission and that a decision to remove the company from it cannot be taken unilaterally by the EP. In such cases, the Secretariat of the register would have to decide, but the EP would have to submit a formal complaint. “However, companies can only be removed from the register if they have failed to comply with their obligations, particularly under the Code of Conduct of the inter-institutional agreement on transparency register. Neither the Code of Conduct nor the procedural rules of the EP oblige third parties to attend a hearing or meeting of a special committee. It is unlikely that a formal complaint procedure would be followed”, Schulz wrote, based on an analysis by the legal services of the EP.
As for withdrawing the long-term access badges, this falls within the responsibility of the quaestors of the European Parliament. Such a decision would have to respond to one of the specific provisions of the procedural rules of the EP, be proportionate and not arbitrary in nature. However, all of the multinationals refused to appear before the EP in the same way, and some of them nonetheless offered to provide written contributions…
“My understanding is as follows: as things currently stand, the EP is not fully equipped with the legal tools to address the issue of non-cooperative behaviour experienced by the TAXE committee”, Schulz went on to explain. He said that if a committee of investigation had been set in place, it too would have faced the same legal limitations.
The EP President feels that the opportunity could be taken to revise the existing regulatory framework in two ways. First of all, revise the EP's own rules on access badges to ensure that the entities in possession of these are also subject to certain obligations to cooperate. He had intended to raise this question of the meeting of the Bureau on 7 October. Secondly, as the Commission is planning to propose an obligatory transparency register by the end of the year, there could be the possibility of amending the Code of Conduct at the same time by means of this procedure and adding new criteria, leading to the possibility of being removed from the register.
TAXE committee's work to be extended? It is also worth noting that Monday's meeting of the coordinators of the TAXE committee showed that as things stand, ALDE, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups are in favour of continuing the work of the special committee beyond November. The EPP and ECR groups are believed to be against and the S&D has not yet agreed on its position. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)