The Parliament needs integrity and transparency to be strong. Reasonable quotas for Parliamentary questions, statements on votes and roll call votes are useful to strengthen the influence of democratic decisions. Many new internal rules strengthen the European Parliament’s efficiency and help avoid obstruction and paralysis. The new commitment only to meet lobbyists who declared themselves in the Transparency Register is a strong wake up call for the ones in the dark to register or to lose the contacts their work relies on. Lobby transparency is a key element to increase the citizens’ trust in the EU Parliament. “It’s a big victory that MEPs will only be allowed to meet registered lobbyists. MEP Sven Giegold, rapporteur for transparency, accountability and integrity in the EU institutions and spokesperson of the German Greens in the European Parliament, comments: Today, just before the vote the team of lead negotiators and representatives of the political groups met for the first time which discusses Parliament’s position for the update of the Transparency Register for lobbyists on which Sven Giegold represents the Greens. This forced the Corbett report to become the arena of decision how transparent Parliament should become. In September 2016 the Conservatives (EPP), Social Democrats and Liberals blocked the vote on the fully negotiated Giegold-report on “Transparency, Accountability and Integrity in the EU institutions”. The most important proposals were then tabled again by more than 100 MEPs from 5 political groups and were today voted on in plenary. However, many improvements on integrity and transparency were blocked by Conservatives (EPP) and Liberals (ALDE) in the Constitutional affairs committee. The Greens presented a “plan for integrity and transparency in the European Parliament” consisting of 46 amendments to the rules of procedure to avoid conflicts of interest and improve transparency. Debates focused on minority rights in the Parliament, lobby transparency and stricter rules on integrity. Today the European Parliament revised its internal rules of procedure, which govern both its day-to-day functioning and the ethics standards for MEPs (“Corbett report”).
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