International

Last Friday the European Parliament Transparency Intergroup, a cross-party network of MEPs, sent an angry letter to Commissioner Frans Timmermans. This year the Commission once again published a report on the member states’ anti-corruption policies, but it will include no chapter on the fight against corruption within the European Union’s own institutions. After the real mess surrounding the European Commissioners’ moonlighting, you’d expect the Commission to make this a spearhead of its approach. Timmermans refuses to do so, however, without coming up with any clear arguments against. We are in no way satisfied with this. If necessary we will demand a plenary debate on the matter, because if the Commission knows so much about how the member states should combat corruption, it should be easy enough for it to hold a mirror up to itself.

We aren’t the only ones to complain about the lack of information on the European institutions’ own anti-corruption policies. The European Union is party to the UN Treaty against Corruption and in that framework it is obliged to report on its own policies. Yet to the extreme dissatisfaction of UN colleagues, it has to date refused to do this. Nor does the Commission participate in the peer review between member states of the Council of Europe, the organisation to which virtually all European countries belong. What does the Commission have to hide that it should present itself in so arrogant a fashion?

You might argue that it would be scarcely to be trusted were the Commission to report on itself. Yet, for example, in the context of the UN, the member states simply report on themselves. These reports represent, however, merely the initial step, following which the affiliated countries question each other. A corruption report from the Commission could moreover form the basis of a critical dialogue with the European Parliament and NGOs such as Transparency International. And if the Commission wants to play it completely cleanly, it should ask the independent European Court of Auditors or the European Ombudsman to carry out the report.

It’s truly scandalous that Frans Timmermans has rejected our concerns without presenting any real arguments. So the last word on this has certainly not been heard. The Intergroup, in which all of the EP’s significant political groups are represented, is capable of taking a hard line, and we will do so, first of all in the letter reproduced below, then at gatherings in the European Parliament, and finally via a plenary debate. You don’t, after all, fight corruption with secrecy, but with transparency, which includes open reporting.