In her written answers to questions put to her by MEPs in preparation for her hearing on Monday 7 October, the Commissioner-designate for Values and Transparency, Vĕra Jourová, unveiled the contours of the future independent ethics body announced in the programme of the President-elect of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
This project, which aims to ensure greater probity among senior European officials, takes on a new dimension with the European Parliament's rejection, on Monday 30 September, of the Romanian and Hungarian commissioners-designate due to conflicts of interest (see EUROPE 12336/2).
Mrs Jourová intends to build this body based on the experience of the Code of Conduct for Commissioners revised in January 2018 and, in particular, on the European Commission’s independent ethics committee (see EUROPE 12283/6, 11951/4).
For the Czech liberal, the main characteristic of the future body, which will be consultative, will have to be its speed and its ability to respond quickly to the various situations that arise. The selection of members is also a key issue, according to her, to ensure its credibility. To preserve “the equidistance from each institution”, the Commissioner considers that “it would not be appropriate” to include current members of the institutions in this interinstitutional body.
Trilogues. On the transparency front, the Commissioner wants to tackle the opacity of interinstitutional negotiations (trilogues) that aim to bring a legislative text to a successful conclusion under the normal Parliament/EU Council co-decision procedure.
In her view, it would be a good idea to make the meeting schedule public and to “list” the points discussed after each meeting. Regarding the ex-post publication of the so-called ‘four-column’ documents (compilation of the positions of the various parties plus the compromises envisaged), the approach must be judged on a case-by-case basis, says Mrs Jourová, who referred to the ‘de Capitani’ judgment of the EU General Court (see EUROPE 12333/10). According to her, the example to follow is that of the Commission, which “rarely refuses public release of an entire ‘four-column’ trilogue document”.
‘Spitzenkandidaten’ and transnational lists. Mrs Jourová wants to increase the electoral participation of European citizens. The Future of Europe Conference (see EUROPE 12288/3) will thus discuss how to “improve” the process of selecting top candidates (‘Spitzenkandidaten') after the European Council buried it by proposing Ursula von der Leyen as President of the European Commission.
The French project linked to the Spitzenkandidaten process to establish transnational lists of candidates for their European elections will also be put back on the table.
Rule of law. “We have learnt that we cannot take the Rule of Law for granted, and we have to be vigilant”, said Mrs Jourová.
In addition to continuing the current ‘Article 7’ proceedings against Poland and Hungary and the infringement proceedings against these two countries, the Commissioner-designate wants to implement the annual monitoring mechanism on the rule of law promised by Mrs von der Leyen.
See written answers from Mrs Jourová: http://bit.ly/2nS6gzE (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)