Brussels, 14/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee (ECON) will be arguing from January onwards for quarterly political dialogue on the monitoring of the Greek bailout plan, explained MEP Sylvie Goulard (ALDE, France) to this newsletter on Wednesday 9 December.
The idea is for the European Parliament as a whole to hold a debate on this subject in plenary once a year.
This is the European Parliament's response to the request from the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, in a letter to the EP president, Martin Schulz, in September 2015 (see EUROPE 11373). The proposal from the chair of ECON, Italy's Roberto Gualtieri (S&D), dated 2 December, is for quarterly dialogues to be held with the Greek government and the 'institutions' representing the country's lenders (European Commission, ECB and IMF) before the end of each of their monitoring missions in Athens. He also suggests setting up a Financial Aid Working Group, along the lines of the Banking Union Working Group, with the task of being “in touch on an ongoing basis” with the aid plan players, in other words also with the head of Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, and the director general of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Klaus Regling. Gualtieri says the EP “should not be directly involved in the implementation of the programme; its role should be rather the democratic scrutiny of the executive.” “The FAWG should prepare ECON quarterly dialogues and should hold regular in camera meetings with the Greek government and the three institutions.” The Working Group could organise fact-finding missions and should draw up an annual report.
The chair of the EP's economic and monetaty affairs committee adds that all the actors concerned should accept to cooperate with the European Parliament, either via an exchange of letters or via an institutional agreement. ''Every step towards enhancing the transparency and the parliamentary control is a positive-step. The practice of deciding everything behind closed doors is unacceptable,” reacted GUE/NGL Dimitrios Papadimoulis, from Syriza, the ruling party in Greece. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)