Debate: Recommendations for reform of the European Parliament’s rules on transparency, integrity, accountability and anti-corruption
Date: WEDNESDAY, 12 JULY 2023
Speaker: Věra Jourová
Language: EN

In my view, Qatargate and other cases which appeared also in the Commission are failures of individual people. But these individual people not only damage their own reputation, but also, of course, the reputation of the institutions and the trust of people went down because they think, many think, that there is everything rotten in Brussels and Strasbourg. So we know that the trust is being shaken. We know very well that what is decreasing the trust of the citizens in institutions and democracy is abuse of power, abuse of public money, corruption, privileges, immunities, impunities, dishonest behaviour and unscrupulous lying. So these are the factors which we hear from the citizens, and that’s why I would not just stop by saying these were individual failures. I think that we need to reinforce the system, and that’s why this debate was very important and very constructive. I think that we all have a very strong wish to reinforce the system, which will increase accountability and transparency. But also I have to mention that no fantastic waterproof system will replace the character, which was said here, something which we call individual integrity of each of us. And indeed, Ms Delbos-Corfield mentioned here the rules in the British Parliament. I was there as well. We discussed the rules there. But first and foremost, there was very strong demand for the individual integrity and moral stance of each of the Members. So I think that this is clear to all of us. I also want to react on the comments on the defence of democracy package, mainly voiced here by Mr Glucksmann, and on the ethics body. I will start with the ethics body. I wanted to explain what’s in the model proposed by the Commission. You know it well. The Commission tried hard to propose something which will be meaningful and legally sound. The work has just started last Friday because we had the first interinstitutional political meeting. Roberta Metsola, representing this House, expressed our strong will to cooperate on the future model of the ethics body which will play an important role, which will have teeth, which will also meet the expectations. So the work has just started. I didn’t hear a ‘no’ from any of the nine institutions, so we are on it and we will convene again in autumn and continue the work, because I believe that the interinstitutional ethics body should create the standards which will be understandable for the citizens and which will address exactly what the people want to see, that there are no undeserved privileges and that we behave according to the same rules. Very briefly on the defence package, indeed it has been postponed. The Commission is now working on the impact assessment. We are collecting data. It’s not an easy thing because this is the data mainly in the possession of the secret services. So we try to get the data from all relevant sources. Not to have the data means that I don’t have the answer on the question how big the problem is. We need to define how the problem is and then to address it with the meaningful rules. So next to working on the impact assessment, we are consulting. We are communicating. I have numerous contacts with NGOs, which are afraid that we will introduce something like a foreign agent law or something which will stigmatise them. I try to explain that the only thing we want is full transparency. Simply, we believe that we must not be naive. We have to take care of what are the foreign influences or interferences and we need to know who of the third—country governments want whom in the EU to do what. So these are the three elements which we want to want to cover. I believe that we needed more time. We will come back in autumn and we will, I’m convinced, propose the piece of legislation which will fill in the loopholes and which will increase transparency so that we also have the tool which now all the big democratic countries have, the US has the law, the UK is working on it, Australia – in all these countries they have this under the criminal justice law. We do not go this way. We want only the transparency rules and I believe that also these countries can serve as a good inspiration, but not for a law which would stigmatise or label somebody as a foreign agent. So thank you very much for your attention and sorry for being too long.