The president of the European Parliament is planning major reforms, with a body that will be responsible for ethical issues
“We have to recover trust, which was built over 20 years and destroyed in a few days,” says the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metzola, in an interview with the Belgian newspaper “Le Soiree”.
The President of the European Parliament wishes to strengthen compliance and control of the existing rules of conduct and intends to implement reforms as soon as possible to protect the integrity of the work of the European Parliament. Roberta Metzola talks to “Soir” about her 14-point proposal, stressing that some actions can be implemented “now.”
“Yes, I would like to see the creation of a body responsible for ethical issues common to all European institutions. It’s an ongoing discussion! We made proposals for this purpose during the previous legislative period, which were not implemented”, she admits R. Metsola emphasizing that he wants to correct the “deficiencies that exist”. He points out that it will be necessary to ensure that if such criminal corruption occurs again, the tools will be in place to “sound the alarm”, to protect MPs, their assistants and Parliament staff.
He also notes that the European Parliament’s current rules are already more ambitious than those of some national parliaments. “I am referring to the obligation to declare the appointments of committee presidents, gifts, trips. All this has been institutionalized for a long time,” says R. Metsola.
“In this Parliament there are almost 7,000 people working, I would like to make sure that all the resources are used properly. And that means, for example, on the transparency register, I need to substantially strengthen that team, and I will do that within the administration. The new general secretary and his two deputies will deal with this”emphasizes the President of the European Parliament, while admitting that in terms of friendship or informal groups, it is unknown how many there are, because there is no list.
R. Metsola believes that there is momentum with the political will to implement new measures within a month and strengthen the rules already in place and concludes by saying that everyone must take their responsibilities: “My responsibility is to ensure that this Parliament can be proud of its integrity, its independence, its accountability and that is what we are trying to do,” he emphasizes.
Finally, when asked if the corruption case in the EP stops at the names that have already been mentioned, R. Metsola answers: “I have not received any new information or a new request to lift immunity.” He also confesses that he hasn’t slept much in the last month. “A year ago I was preparing for my election in Plenary session on January 18 and I was thinking that the biggest problem would be to get out of the pandemic, I also wanted to reform the plenary. I’ve been in politics for a long time, so I know you can never predict what tomorrow will bring. What I promised in January and continue to do is that when I get questions, I answer them, no matter how difficult they are. Does not matter! If I didn’t, I would be doing the EP a disservice. And I don’t think that would show respect to the citizens who will be called upon in 2024 to trust us.”
RES-EMP
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