Parliament unit answers the critics

Date: 12/02/1998

By Rory Watson

STUNG by the scale of criticism levelled against it in recent months, the European Parliament has established a Rapid Response Unit to marshal its arguments more effectively.

The initiative was endorsed by the Parliament President José María Gil-Robles and Secretary-General Julian Priestley after complaints from senior MEPs that the institution's image was being unjustly tarnished.

The unit's chief task, according to a report prepared by Priestley, will be to coordinate "Parliament's reactions to the criticisms which have recently been levelled against it on a regular basis and which may appear in the press" and to "enable Parliament to react rapidly to any false, partial or tendentious information".

With the June 1999 European elections on the horizon and MEPs poised to increase their legislative powers under the Amsterdam Treaty, many argue that it is important that their side of the story be accurately told.

The unit will work alongside the institution's existing information services and will be in close contact with the Parliament's offices in the various member states. "We are at the focal point of information flow and in close liaison with the president and the secretary-general. You have to have effective coordination. If you do not have that, then the information chain breaks down. Our role is to provide accurate, objective information," explained head of unit Helen McAvoy.

To help that flow, the unit will be able to draw on a network of officials in other parliamentary departments handling specific policy issues.

In time, the new service aims to be more proactive by providing special fact-sheets on questions of widespread interest such as MEPs' salaries, allowances and pensions. These have been at the heart of many recent attacks on the Parliament.

Senior Euro MPs believe that the criticism is prompted by a number of factors. General dissatisfaction with politicians and EU institutions is one. But some claim that another stems from within the Parliament itself as some members attempt to highlight scandals so as to boast of their own pristine credentials for domestic political purposes.

Pressure for what he termed "a crisis cell to deal with all urgencies" first came from the vice-president for information policy, Greek New Democracy MEP George Anastassopoulos.

While denouncing many of the attacks as ill-informed and unjustified, he told his colleagues that the Parliament itself was partly to blame for its lacklustre response to criticism. In particular, he criticised the "unacceptably slow, uncoordinated and unconvincing way" in which it had sometimes reacted.

The EP is to set up a Rapid Response Unit to co-ordinate its reactions to criticisms.