Fellow MEPs should join me in an open contest

Friday, February 20, 2009

The Liberal Democrat candidate for the European Parliament's presidency, Graham Watson, has just received support from a senior MEP from an opposition political group who criticised the election's secretive nature. In this article, Watson calls upon his fellow candidates to break tradition and have it out in the open

On 6th January I launched my campaign to be the next President of the European Parliament The President is directly elected by MEPs, who themselves comprise the only directly elected body among the EU institution. The contest presents an excellent opportunity for candidates to debate openly the role of parliament and how its standing could be improved, but here's the snag: it appears that none of the other candidates want to.

The standard operating procedure for selecting a new President involves a backroom deal between the EPP Group of which the British Tories are still - for the moment - members, and the Socialist Group, which includes the UK's Labour MEPs. Left and right carve up the job into two halves, with a Member from each group serving as President for two and a half years of the five year parliamentary term. No muss, no fuss, and certainly no debate.

As a liberal, I find this deeply frustrating. Choice, openness, and the contest of ideas are at the core of my beliefs. So, in an attempt to break the mould and do my bit for accountability, I have decided to make my campaign a public one. I hope that by laying out my plan for improving Parliament and promoting the benefits of Europe, I can draw out the other candidates, tease out the issues, and show why I believe that I can do the job well.

But the issue at stake is broader than one election. Democracy breathes the oxygen of transparency. In order to win public trust, executive, legislature, and judiciary must submit themselves to the service and scrutiny of the public. It is when they fail to live up to those standards that they forfeit citizens' trust and confidence. In the UK, that holds true for domestic government and for the EU institutions too.

In its early years in government, New Labour appeared to get this and, to its credit, passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), widening citizens' access to public documents. At the risk of sounding partisan, it is worth noting that the Scottish Parliament's equivalent legislation was a little further-reaching than the English Act thanks to the Liberal Democrats who were then in coalition government with Labour north of the border. There was a great deal of hand-wringing about the onerous burden of responding to freedom of information requests - and there is no denying the extra work asked of civil servants - but the Act is now well-established, and I wager that there would be little sympathy for any move to repeal it.

In recent years however the culture of disclosure has found less favour among government ministers whose association with dodgy dossiers, rendition flights, and Guantanamo Bay has heightened their appetite for authoritarian measures as much as it has curbed their enthusiasm for disclosure. By 2007 we were faced with the unedifying spectacle of MPs (Labour and Conservative) voting to exempt themselves from the FOIA. If politicians act as if they have something to hide, they can hardly complain when citizens assume they do.

But while Westminster is battening down the hatches, Brussels is opening up. Eurosceptics feed off stories about EU secrecy, and European politicians have rightly recognised that the only way to counter the anti-EU insurgency is to get their house in order. That is why a Regulation was adopted in 2001 to widen public access to information generated by the institutions. I know - I chaired the parliamentary committee that dealt with it, and co-chaired the negotiations on the detail with the Swedish EU Presidency at the time. Like the FOIA, this was a welcome development which is now entrenched in European law.

Unlike the UK - and despite some contrary moves by the European Commission - the current direction is to expand the new law rather than contract it: and expansion is necessary. For example. those who have sought to access formal legal opinions, issued in relation to laws being considered, have found their requests blocked: the terms of the 2001 Regulation do not apply in these cases. Similarly, decisions taken by the Council of Ministers are ruled ultra vires, meaning that citizens are not entitled to know how their own government ministers voted when representing their interests. This has to change.

For some time, the European Parliament has been pushing for a comprehensive review of the Regulation. That is now underway, but we're not just waiting for the Commission. This month a Member of my Group persuaded Parliament to adopt his report on public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents. The Cappato Report lays out twenty three separate recommendations for locking transparency into the actions and output of the EU's institutions. These include proposals for a Parliamentarians' register of parliamentary activities, compulsory disclosure on MEPs' committee attendance and voting record, and the creation of an online portal - common to all the institutions - so that citizens can more easily keep track of EU activities and the legislative process. With cooperation from all parties concerned we could have these measures in place before June's European Parliament elections.

A culture of disclosure and transparency is putting down ever-deeper roots in the European Union, and there is no going back. This is the way to reassure citizens that Europe is on their side, to win their trust and confidence, and confirm the legitimacy of the institutions. I only hope that the other candidates for the Parliament's presidency will recognise the benefits and join me in an open contest.

Graham Watson is the Liberal Democrat MEP for the South West of England and Gibraltar Leader of the Liberal and Democrat MEPs in the European Parliament