EPP finishes ‘bottom’ of list in reform of Parliament

By Martin Banks

Date: 20/055/04

MEPS from the Union's large member states and from the European Parliament's biggest political group, the centre-right European People's Party, have been the biggest obstacles to reform.

That is the verdict of a major survey of members' voting patterns over the five years of the outgoing Parliament.

One of its key findings was that Liberal MEPs have been the most - and centre-right members the least - reform-minded in the current legislature.

It also claims that MEPs from only six of the 15 old member states, including five of the smallest, have consistently voted in favour of reform.

"This shows what we are up against," says Dutch Socialist member Michiel van Hulten. "If the Parliament's biggest political group is so strongly opposed to reform on the way MEPs work what chance have we got?"

The study was commissioned by the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform (CPR) - a 90-strong group of cross-party MEPs - and conducted by Professor Simon Hix, of the London School of Economics, and Abdul Noury, of Brussels' Free University.

They studied 40 'roll call' votes between 1999 and 2004: ten dealing with the question of a single seat for Parliament (ie scrapping the monthly trip to Strasbourg) and 30 with members' pay and work conditions.

Each vote was given a mark of 2.5% and the list contains only MEPs who have taken part in at least ten out of the 40 votes. Deputies were ranked from zero to 100 and results were divided into four categories: strongly pro-reform (75-100); pro-reform (50-75); anti-reform (25-50) and strongly anti-reform (below 25).

According to the study:

• The Liberals (ELDR) with 84% and Greens (83%) were deemed the most pro- reform groups, with the Party of European Socialists (PES) ranked as 'pro-reform';
• the European People's Party and European Democrats group (EPP-ED) has the worst reform score of the eight political factions, including non-attached members (29%);
• MEPs from Denmark and the Netherlands had the highest score (82% each) with Greece and Luxembourg the lowest (34%);
• members from four-out-of-five of the largest member states (France, Germany, Italy, Spain) were classed as anti-reform;
• two Dutch and two Belgian deputies top the pro-reform list, with 100%, and;
• Greek centre-right MEP, Rodi Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou, is last on the list, with just 3%.

The survey also classes German MEP Martin Schulz, tipped to lead the PES after June's European elections, as 'anti-reform' (43%) while it says EPP-ED leader Hans-Gert Pöttering, a candidate to be Parliament's next president, is 'strongly anti-reform', scoring just 13% on reform issues.

Pat Cox, the assembly's outgoing president, is the most staunchly pro-reform Irish MEP (92%).

The survey finds that the controversial Hans-Peter Martin, recently vilified for exposing an alleged expenses scam by some MEPs, is the most pro-reform Austrian member (94%) but also has the lowest participation rate in reform votes of any Austrian MEP (45%).

Former European Commission president Jacques Santer, who is retiring as an MEP and whose Commission team was forced to resign en masse in 1999 for failing to do enough to combat fraud, is one of the deputies with the lowest score.

Van Hulten, who is not seeking re-election, said: "This reform index is about holding MEPs to account and letting voters known how representatives voted on a range of important reform issues over the last five years.

"This is so that when they come to vote next month they can take this into account," he added.

"The really big reforms we wanted - a single seat and expenses reform - have not materialized and that isn't surprising when large member state deputies and the biggest group have shown themselves to be so blatantly anti-reform."

However, an EPP spokesman hit back at the study's assertion that its members are not interested in reform, saying: "This is simply not true. The CPR has taken a subjective list of what it considers to be 'reform' issues and judges members accordingly.

"But we could have come up with another set of issues producing a different set of results."

For and against

Political group average (%):

Strongly pro-reform:

• ELDR 84
• Greens/EFA 83
• United Left 79
• Europe of Democracies and Diversites 65

Pro-reform:

• PES 58
• Anti-reform:
• Non-attached 43
• Union for a Europe of the Nations 31
• EPP 29

By member state (%):

Strongly pro-reform:

• Denmark 82
• Netherlands 82
• Finland` 78
• UK 78
• Sweden 77

Pro-reform:

• Belgium 67

Anti-reform:

• France 45
• Ireland 45
• Austria 43
• Italy 37
• Spain 36
• Germany 35
• Portugal 35
• Greece 34
• Luxembourg 34

Article reports on a major survey of MEPs' voting patterns over the five years of the outgoing Parliament. The study was commissioned by the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform (CPR), a group of cross-party MEPs, and conducted by Simon Hix of the London School of Economics and Abdul Noury of Brussels' Free University.