A hearing by the parliamentary committee on Women’s Rights (FEMM) on Monday 9 November of four persons involved in the fight against sexual harassment and abuse in the European Parliament highlighted its continuing shortcomings.
“There is still work to be done if the European Parliament is to become the leading European institution in the fight against this phenomenon”, acknowledged the Vice-President of the European Parliament, Dimitrios Papadimoulis, who is responsible for the High Level Group on Gender Equality and Diversity, during the very first minutes of the hearing.
The speeches focused on the work of two advisory committees on harassment: one dealing with complaints between accredited parliamentary assistants and MEPs and the other with complaints concerning Parliament staff.
Several criticisms of these two bodies were made by Miriam-Lena Horn, accredited assistant and representative of the MeTooEP movement (see EUROPE 12114/30).
Mrs Horn first addressed the issue of the evaluation of these two committees that was requested by the plenary in its 2017 resolution on combating sexual harassment and abuse in the EU (see EUROPE 11892/26).
She denounced the lack of transparency and independence, pointing out that only one of these assessments had been carried out - but not subsequently published - and that the experts responsible for it had been appointed by Mrs Morin-Chartier, who was then chairperson of one of the two committees.
Miriam-Lena Horn also regretted that there are still two separate committees, a configuration that, according to her, gives the impression of differential treatment of complaints.
She also stated that the committee responsible for affairs between MEPs and assistants suffers from unequal composition: 3 MEPs compared to 2 assistants’ representatives, “ which, rest assured, does not encourage victims to come forward”, she stressed.
Previously, MEP Anne Sander (EPP, France), the committee’s quaestor, had, on the contrary, welcomed a balanced composition, particularly since the October 2019 revision (see EUROPE 12345/22). She also welcomed the extension of the committee’s jurisdiction to cover complaints against Members from other staff members and not just assistants.
Mr Papadimoulis also stressed the importance of ensuring in the future that the place of victims in “the hierarchy of Parliament” should not be an obstacle to lodging a complaint.
The representative of MeTooEP, finally, regretted that the confidential register of harassment cases, requested in the 2017 resolution, had never seen the light of day, and that sexual harassment prevention training for all staff (see EUROPE 12241/13) is still not compulsory.
Anne Sander indicated that, since 2014, 23 cases dealing mainly with allegations of psychological harassment have been handled by her committee. The chair of the second committee, Ellen Robson, reported three complaints of sexual harassment since 2019, two of which have been resolved. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)