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NEWS | Wednesday, 10 October 2007

Liberal’s head warns of reigning secrecy in Brussels

Karl Schembri

The head of the European parliament’s Liberal group, Graham Watson, warned yesterday that there are too many elected officials in Brussels who are against transparency, in the face the European Ombudsman’s ruling upholding a MaltaToday request to access MEPs’ allowances and spending.
“There are lots of people who don’t want transparency,” Watson said at a meeting with journalists yesterday morning on a brief visit to the islands.
While his group – the third largest one in Brussels after the Popular People’s Party and the Socialists – is supporting measures to reform the European Parliament, the majority seems more keen keeping their earnings under wraps, promising a direct conflict between Parliament and the Ombudsman.
“Each member of our group publishes money claimed and spent, even on their website,” Watson said. “The public has a right to know.”
Watson’s group is also backing a working party on reform of the parliament.
“We’re backing a move that would see MEPs’ assistants paid directly by the European Parliament,” he said. “Most of MEPs do not make good employers, so it would be better to have their assistants employed by the institution.”
In a historic first for a Maltese newspaper, the European Ombudsman recognised MaltaToday’s right to access to data detailing the allowances received by Malta’s five MEPs last month.
Ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros said the European Parliament’s refusal to grant the newspaper access constituted maladministration and that MEPs have to be aware of the public interest in their use of public funds.
Almost two years after submitting his complaint, Matthew Vella, editor of MaltaToday’s Wednesday edition, will be awaiting a decision by the European Parliament to grant Business Today’s sister newspaper access to the payments – daily allowances, assistants’ salaries and travel allowances – paid to Malta’s five MEPs after it was refused access back in August 2005.
The Ombudsman’s decision has far-reaching ramifications on the spending trail of 785 European parliamentarians and comes at a time when more transparency and accountability is being called upon the parliament.
Watson said his visit to Malta was intended to “take the temperature” here since EU membership, showing a particular interest in immigration, bird hunting and food health and safety issues.
Entrenching a ban on abortion in the constitution would be “quite a setback,” he said, also calling it “a retrograde step”.
About the Euroepan border agency Frontex, Watson said it was “ridiculous to have a rusty ship and two helicopters” supposed to cope with the flow of migration. It was also “ridiculous that Gibraltar is still excluded from Frontex and that it has taken so long for the EU to react to immigration” although he lauded the proposal for a blue card.
“I don’t see migration essentially as a threat. I see it as an opportunity,” he said. “I come from the draw-the-bridge-down camp; we need dialogue to face gloablisation.”
Graham Watson was the first British Liberal Democrat ever to be elected to the European Parliament, winning the Somerset & North Devon constituency with a majority of over 22,500.
From 1994 to 1999, Graham was a member of the Committee for Economic & Monetary Affairs and Industrial Policy and the Budgets Committee. From July 1999 to 2002 he served as Chairman of the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs. In January 2002 Graham Watson was elected as Leader of the European Parliament’s Liberal Democrat group, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.


10 October 2007
ISSUE NO. 506


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