MEPs on the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) were divided, on Thursday 19 November, when they voted on their opinion for the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) on the creation of an independent ethical body at EU level (see EUROPE 12338/7).
The final text, which goes against the initial ambition of the rapporteur, Derk Jan Eppink (ECR, Netherlands), and supports the creation of such a body, did not however receive broad support and was approved by 26 votes in favour, 13 against and 20 abstentions. The EPP Group voted against the report by a majority, while the RE, ECR and ID Groups abstained en masse.
The rapporteur said did not want to explicitly call for such an initiative in the text and proposed instead to recommend “to consider asking to explore in due course the creation of an independent and non-political EU ethical body or to empower the European Ombudsman or the European Anti-Fraud Office with a broad mandate”. His compromise proposal, which received only 12 votes, was not adopted.
For its part, the S&D group tabled an alternative compromise amendment recommending the creation of such a body to ensure the common application of ethical rules in all EU institutions and agencies, including the European Central Bank and the European Parliament, and which should be independent in terms of structure, governance and budget. Here again, however, the compromise was not adopted, by just a few votes.
The Greens/EFA group’s amendment was finally adopted, by 29 votes in favour, 27 against and one abstention, calling for “ the creation of an independent European ethics body to ensure the common application of ethical rules in all EU institutions”.
For the rest, the final text calls for a broad mandate, including: - monitoring and sanctioning breaches of ethics and integrity within the EU institutions and agencies; - the application of strict rules for pre- and post-employment in the public sector; -monitoring of so-called “cooling off” periods; - the maintenance of a European online ethics register, allowing access to key transparency documents.
MEPs also point to the problems inherent in the financial sector, notably due to information asymmetries between financial market participants and civil servants, but above all to the lack of a harmonised framework of rules on conflicts of interest within the EU institutions and agencies.
While the text openly mentions the conflict of interest case of the former Executive Director of the European Banking Authority, Adam Farkas - on which the ECON Committee had already taken a position (EUROPE 12389/19) - it refrains, on the other hand, from referring to the Commission’s decision to award a contract to the American investment management firmBlackRock to conduct a study on the integration of environmental and social factors in the supervision of banks (see EUROPE 12574/9).
While an alternative compromise had been tabled by the Verts/ALE Group to mention the ‘BlackRock’ case, it was the rapporteur’s compromise that was finally adopted, which merely regrets the lack of measures of examination, prevention and enforcement aimed at avoiding conflicts of interest in the Commission’s public procurement procedure. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)