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Perhaps I’m gullible, but I always try to put questions in a straightforward fashion to increase the transparency of the European Parliament. This week I received once again a rebuttal. For the time being there will be no detailed insight into the positions which senior officials occupy after they leave the EP secretariat. This fits the pattern of allowing as little information as possible to emerge. I find this a scandalous attitude, not only on the part of the officials who write such responses, but also on the person whose ultimate responsibility this is, the EP president. Yes, you guessed it, it’s that man again: Martin Schulz. But I’m not going to let it rest there.

It was in any event a strange answer that I received to my written question: ‘The EP must first make agreements with the European Commission and the Council, before there can be a definitive procedure for making data public regarding the jobs taken by ex-officials of the EP’. This is despite the fact that the personnel statute now states that a survey of these posts must be produced. Luckily, the answer states, this is as things stand a theoretical question, because no officials have left who have informed the authorities that they have taken other jobs. Evidently there’s no monitoring whatsoever of the positions taken up. Very nice for the officials who, for example, have had access to confidential information but who, following their departure, take up a position with a private company – even if it isn’t paid or full-time – where that information may be of great value. It’s a matter of preventing and combating this sort of conflict of interest, but apparently none of this is all that important.

This fits into a trend: recently I asked the EP secretariat if my personal website could have an extra tab where my meetings with lobbyists could be listed. I have nothing to hide, and want to share this information with the public, but here too I received a remarkable answer: this was no ‘technical’ matter but a question which must be decided at the highest level. After this I heard nothing, so I may raise it with Schulz directly.

I received a comparable answer, but now signed by Schulz himself, in response to my request to be able to list, on the official reports one writes for the EP, the lobbyists who have influenced a report’s contents. According to Schulz the issue had not been raised by any political group and he therefore saw no reason to back my request. This concerned in fact the commitment that his predecessor, Jerzy Buzek, had made in writing to the members of the MEPs’ Code of Conduct working group, of which I was a member.

The European Parliament is a somewhat unknown and unloved institution, with few people remembering the name of the MEP or MEPs representing them. As things stand there is no European people, no demos, and so it’s logical that Dutch citizens, for instance, look to the Dutch Parliament in The Hague and less or not at all to the EP. So if you’re still not prepared to be as transparent as possible, you shouldn’t think it so strange if many people increasingly distrust its activities.

Together with the EP’s officially recognised transparency Intergroup (a cross-party network of concerned MEPs), of which I am co-chair, I will continue to raise these questions as long as Martin Schulz and his officials are so sick of it that they’re driven round the bend. That’s the only way in which we can chart the work of corporate lobbyists in the Parliament, and the only way in which we can know whether MEPs represent the people or simply the lobbyists. That’s more than worth the fight.