Former members of the European Parliament will be banned from lobbying in Brussels and Strasbourg for six months after leaving office, under plans endorsed by political leaders at a closed-door meeting Wednesday night.
Roberta Metsola, the center-right Maltese Parliament chief, floated an initial 14-point list of reforms to beef up transparency and integrity rules, and futureproof the institution against any repeat of the Qatargate scandal, in which current and former MEPs have been charged with taking bribes from Qatar and Morocco.
Other reforms include an amnesty for MEPs to file late declarations of gifts and paid-for trips, an entry log for the Parliament, and widening the scope of MEPs and assistants who must declare meetings with lobbyists.
According to an EU official, there were only minor tweaks and changes to wording from the document seen by POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook earlier Wednesday. That document included several changes from Metsola’s original proposals, chief among them a stronger commitment to beef up protections for whistleblowers and a shortening of the so-called cooling-off period that bans former MEPs from immediate lobbying work, downgrading it from a possible 24 months to just six after leaving office.
“Work on these reforms will start immediately in order to ensure entry into force as soon as possible,” the Parliament said in a press release.
“We want to move forward so it’s now time to implement them,” Manfred Weber, leader of the center-right European People’s Party, told POLITICO after the meeting, saying there’d been a “general green light” for the package. Four Parliament officials who were in the room confirmed that an informal agreement had been reached.
There was no formal vote at the meeting, but even though no political faction is threatening to block the process, the Greens, Socialists & Democrats (S&D) and Left groups want more.
“They want to paper over the cracks and not put in place having a vice president in charge of corruption, obligations to do with the transparency register and declaring assets at the start and end of the mandate of MEPs,” Left co-chair Manon Aubry told POLITICO.
Aubry said that next week in Strasbourg she will push for a further debate and a Parliament text on the importance of sticking to the far-reaching Qatargate resolution approved by a majority of MEPs in December, in the immediate aftermath of the scandal erupting.
source: politico
