"We need more transparency for the work of the European Parliament"

Europe for Family is an apolitical and non-denominational collective of citizens committed to defending the family from international institutions.

Is the European Parliament transparent? In principle, yes. And the regulations and treaties compel it to do so. But, since May 2019, the reality on the ground has been different.

Indeed, the transparency of the European institutions is ensured by article 15 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which provides that "Every citizen of the Union has a right of access to the documents of the institutions, organs and bodies of the Union ' . As a sign of the importance of this transparency towards citizens, the Parliament and the Council devoted a specific directive to it. It specifies in particular that "documents drawn up or received within the framework of a legislative procedure are made directly accessible (by electronic means) ."

The European Union has produced a number of other regulations and directives relating to transparency: from the transparency of financial records to the transparency of drug reimbursement, all themes are concerned. Transparency of the institutions is a competence of the European Ombudsman, currently Ms Emily O'Reilly. However, none of his communications have so far dealt with the lack of transparency towards civil society.

But if we look at the official website of Parliament, the pages "Work in progress" have been empty for several months for some committees. May not be available for certain committees, tables with report names, and regularly updated amendment tabling dates. The reports themselves are not available so that no work can be done by civil society. Before the 2019 elections, all legislative information was clearly indicated. What explains this sudden opacity of the European Parliament? Europe for Family first granted the benefit of the reorganization following the May 2019 election; but since January 2020, doubt is no longer possible: the organization of Parliament makes the work of monitoring, influencing and monitoring NGOs and civil society impossible to carry out.

For ordinary citizens, it is impossible to navigate: parliamentary texts are only published once they have reached the stage of voting in plenary session, that is to say just before the final vote. And how can an NGO know if the themes it defends will be addressed without having access to parliamentary reports? How to defend the rights of its members if an NGO is kept in the dark about the parliamentary agenda?

In 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev launched his famous policy of "Glasnost" (transparency) to curb the inertia of the Soviet bureaucratic machine. Because an administration, as powerful as it is, always needs to be propelled by values ​​more than by regulations.

A lack of transparency discredits the work of an entire institution and taints its legitimacy. The European Union cannot both regret a rise in eurosceptic sentiment and refuse to communicate on its internal activities. The current situation is therefore completely ambivalent: the EU claims to embody values ​​of openness and transparency ... but is unable to put them into practice.

Read also: Who are the Eurosceptics and who are the Pro-Europeans?

Without the work of civil society, the problems of conflicts of interest and poor governance would remain in the shadows. Only civil society has the political independence necessary to prevent certain cases from being stifled by inter-party arrangements. More than ever, the transparency of the European institutions towards civil society is necessary so that the EU can regain its democratic legitimacy.

Perceived as a soulless technocratic machine, it is time for the European Union to make its glasnost.

Two examples:

- The AFET parliamentary committee and its report on human rights : the Annual Report on Democracy and Human Rights. Although it was one of the most important of the year for the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, the pages of this committee never published this report before its final adoption by Parliament, while the adoption process at first reading in committee then tabling of amendment for vote in plenary spread over almost four months.

In addition to the fact that this transparency of the work in progress is required by European legislation, the opacity of the Foreign Affairs Committee has prevented civil society from doing its job: NGOs active in human rights have not been able to follow the discussion process or make suggestions.

- The use of emergency procedures to get controversial articles through: some parties took advantage of the particular circumstances of the Covid-19 crisis to have Parliament adopt particularly sensitive points, such as the right to abortion ( which is not a European competence) or the rights of transgender, intersex and people with AIDS.4 What does this have to do with Covid-19? No. But the far left and environmentalists took advantage of the looser voting rules to introduce this amendment. With the reduction of the deadlines for tabling the amendments, it was not possible for representatives of civil society to alert parliamentarians to this paragraph, which therefore passed by 409 votes to 221.