On Thursday 19 January, in response to the alleged corruption scandal that affected it first, the Social Democrat group in the European Parliament sent the President of the EU institution, Roberta Metsola, 15 proposals to strengthen the ethical and transparency rules applicable to the MEP mandate.
It will now apply these measures to its own members in order to demonstrate its willingness to tackle this issue head on and restore the confidence of the electorate.
This includes the obligation for MEPs, their parliamentary assistants and group staff to meet only with third parties who are registered in the European transparency register. The holding of these meetings with representatives of interest groups should also be made public.
The Social Democrats also support ideas already put forward by Ms Metsola last week (see EUROPE 13098/8), such as the introduction of a waiting period for lobbying the EU institutions - the S&D group advocates a period of 24 months - as well as the setting up of a special committee to look into malfunctions within the assembly.
On Wednesday, the Social Democrats agreed on the details of an internal enquiry to be led by two outsiders - British former Labour MEP Richard Corbett and the chair of Transparency International’s Spanish office, Silvina Bacigalupo - to shed light on the internal mistakes made (see EUROPE 13102/1).
See the fifteen proposals of the S&D group: https://aeur.eu/f/4z9
On Tuesday, The Left group did the same, setting out its own proposals. It advocates, for example, an alignment of whistleblower protection in the European Parliament with EU whistleblower law. According to the radical left group, MEPs should also declare their assets at the beginning and end of their electoral term.
See the proposals from The Left: https://aeur.eu/f/4zh (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)