The Quaestors of the European Parliament unanimously decided on Tuesday 16 April in Strasbourg not to collect ExxonMobil's Parliament access cards.
They are thus opposed to the request made on Thursday 21 March by the Greens/EFA group (see EUROPE 12220/16), after the US oil giant refused to participate in a public hearing on climate change denial organised by Parliament's Petitions (PETI) and Environment (ENVI) Committees.
According to the Quaestors, Parliament's Rules of Procedure certainly provide for the possibility of withdrawing a person's access to Parliament when he or she “has refused to comply with an official invitation to a hearing” (Article 116a). However, this provision cannot be applied in the present case, as no “official invitation” to this event had been sent to ExxonMobil.
According to our information, the American company received by email an invitation from the ENVI committee to participate in the hearing to which the provisional programme of the hearing was attached – which allowed for a response by an ExxonMobil member. However, no official letter was also sent to him.
Contacted by EUROPE, the company welcomed the decision of Parliament Quaestors, while recalling that it was unable to participate in the hearing on 21 March “due to an ongoing climate dispute in the United States”. It had informed the ENVI and PETI committees in a letter sent the day before the hearing to their chairpersons, Adina-Ioana Vălean (EPP, Romania) and Cecilia Wikström (ALDE, Sweden) respectively.
The NGOs and the Greens/EFA group had considered such reasoning insufficient in their letters to the Conference of Presidents (see EUROPE 12234/4) and to the President of Parliament, Antonio Tajani respectively.
Reacting to the Quaestors' decision, Molly Scott Cato (Greens/EFA, UK) said she was “deeply disappointed that ExxonMobil will continue to have the right to haunt the corridors of the Parliament, spreading their disinformation about climate change and blocking the action we need to take to protect the planet for future generations”. She also stressed the need for Parliament to “to show that it is serious when it organises public hearings on important issues”, stressing the need to send “a legally watertight official invitation”.
“MEPs missed a huge opportunity to show they are on the side of the people, not polluters”, said Frida Kieninger, a member of the NGO Food & Water Europe.
Finally, for Geoffrey Supran, a Harvard University researcher and co-author of a report evaluating ExxonMobil's communications on climate change, even if the Quaestors' conclusions are disappointing, the 21 March hearing set a crucial precedent.
“This was the first time, anywhere in the world, that lawmakers convened expressly to hear expert testimony about the history and consequences of climate change denial by the fossil fuel industry”, he noted. He concluded, “As with the history of tobacco, this was just the first hearing... It won't be the last.”
See the letter from the Greens/EFA group: https://bit.ly/2YbYSg2; the letter from NGOs: https://bit.ly/2uWrMU9 ; the letter from ExxonMobil: https://bit.ly/2VPgrB9. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot - intern)