Today, European Democracy Consulting lodged an official complaint with the @EUombudsman against the Authority for #EuropeanParties over its implementation of transparency requirements.
The APPF was set up in 2014 to register, control and sanction European parties & foundations. It is the #EU’s party monitoring body and watchdog. As such, it has a key role for anything relating to #EuropeanParties. 2/14 appf.europa.eu/appf/en/author…
Regulation 1141/2014 establishes clear transparency requirements binding upon the APPF, the @Europarl_EN and European parties, aimed at ensuring that citizens and the #media have the means to know, engage with, and monitor #EuropeanParties. 3/14 eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/…
In particular, it requires information about #EuropeanParties to be provided on a single website, including about sums received, financial statements, work programmes, name of donors and the value of their donations under certain conditions, sanctions & lists of member MEPs. 4/14
However, the APPF had consistently failed to meet both the letter and the spirit of these requirements, with information located on separate websites, not up-to-date, not in line with the Regulation’s requirements, or is missing entirely. 5/14
The information is often published as provided by #EuropeanParties, in separate scanned PDFs. The APPF does not consolidate information and no data is provided in machine-readable formats. This falls far short of any standard of visibility, clarity and user-friendliness. 6/14
This continued lack of public information, its incompleteness, the way it is displayed & the multiplicity of locations where it is stored are particularly damaging for citizens’ good understanding of #EuropeanParties that seek to represent them & that they vote for. #EP2019 7/14
This is especially important at the #European level, where citizens only have a limited familiarity with #EuropeanParties. The lack of a minimum visibility for EU parties guaranteed by the APPF has a direct impact on citizens’ choice-making ahead of EP elections. #EP2019 8/14
Why are we doing this? Because we consider political parties an essential component of representative democracy. The EU & citizens stand to gain from stronger, more affirmed & more visible #EuropeanParties with a closer link to the citizens they represent. #Europeademocracy 9/14
On 26 March, we notified the APPF of our intend to lodge a complaint within 3 months & provided an analysis of shortcomings & a report on #EP2019. To this day, the APPF has failed to take any remedial action to abide by its transparency requirements. 10/14 eudemocracy.eu/failure-appf-t…
We call on the APPF to consolidate all information on #EuropeanParties on a single website, ensure the information provided is clear, complete, understandable, up-to-date & consistently updated, matches the Regulation's requirements, & available in machine-readable formats. 11/14
We encourage them to go beyond basic requirements, as more information about #EuropeanParties is needed for the benefit of citizens. The @Europarl_EN's website can be a source of inspiration, as it lists electoral data in an interactive and clearly understandable manner. 12/14
Over the past several years, @EDC_eudemocracy has made many, many requests to the European Parliament to access decisions by its Bureau on the funding of #europeanparties. These included decisions for funding (for the coming year) and final accounts (which wrap up the process).
Invariably, these documents were provided with heavy redactions over the parts covering the EP's reasoning for its decisions: we could see the outcome (amounts), but not how decisions were made. Until yesterday, the latest full document related to funding for 2015 -- 8 years ago.
To be clear, the point of this thread is *not* to argue that TNLs will make our common election less European, simply that they will not remedy the election's core deficiency (that national parties are in control) and that, therefore, they are not the right way forward. 3/25
Of course, "the @EU_Commission shall be completely independent" and "the members of the Commission shall neither seek nor take instructions from any Government". (Art. 17.3 TEU #LisbonTreaty). So there should be no need for #1country1commissioner rule. #IamEuropean 🇪🇺
Furthermore, "As from 1/11/2014, the @EU_Commission shall consist of a number of members [equal to] two thirds of the number of Member States" (Art. 17.5 TEU #LisbonTreaty)..... "unless the @EUCouncil [...] decides to alter this number". Which it did right away. #IamEuropean 🇪🇺
When we talk about simplifying administrative processes (#smartstate), we don't mean "big" things, just a collection of small things that contribute to making people's lives needlessly more complicated, especially abroad. Here's a silly example with a birth registration. 👇 1/7
A child is born in #Austria and registered with local authorities. Local authorities issue, for free, an original Austrian birth certificate in German and are thoughtful enough to include, for free, an original international birth certificate in multiple languages. 2/7
However, #French authorities will not accept the international birth certificate because it says "extract"; instead, they want a full version, even just in German. This requires us to book an appointment with local authorities and, this time, pay for a new original. 3/7