S&D Group Statement on its Internal Inquiry.
As Socialists and Democrats, we are committed to enhancing transparency and accountability in our group, in the European Parliament and the EU institutions as a whole.
In this spirit, the S&D group decided to undertake an internal inquiry. It was conducted from March to June 2023 by three independent renowned experts: the governance expert Prof. Jean-Pierre Garitte, the expert on European Parliament rules of procedure Dr. Richard Corbett, and expert in economic criminal law Dr. Silvina Bacigalupo. The experts undertook the inquiry and formulated their recommendations independently.
Key findings of the report:
- Geostrategic interference and geostrategic corruption is a relatively new and high risk scenario and the EU institutions need to strengthen their resilience by updating their rules and procedures.
- The existing regulatory framework laying down ethical requirements for MEPs and staff are distributed over at least 27 different documents at various levels of the legal hierarchy, and the report has discovered a number of shortcomings.
- No new facts emerged that should have been brought to the attention of the judicial authorities.
The Bureau and Group take note of the recommendations of the experts to strengthen our group against geostrategic corruption, as well as improving EU, European Parliament and S&D rules and procedures.
Key recommendations of the report:
- address the shortcomings in the existing EU, European Parliament and S&D rules
- internal monitoring function of compliance with the applicable rules in the European Parliament and the S&D Group in the form of an appointment of a dedicated vice-president for transparency assisted by adequate group staff
- requirement for MEPs to declare conflicts of interests to be added to the S&D Group rules
- rotation of staff dealing with vulnerable policy areas
- continued review and reform of our internal processes and rules, in cooperation with our staff, as well as of the institutional environment.
With our 15-Point-Plan we are already applying or will continue to follow-up on a number of the recommendations made by the experts, such as:
- Strengthen and enhance Whistleblower Protection
- Ensure the internal disclosure and internal register of meetings by MEPs, which the Group already applies unilaterally, while pushing for it to apply to the whole European Parliament.
- Set up an Ethics Body with external, independent members, able to issue guidelines and advice, but also conduct investigations and propose disciplinary measures.
The Bureau and the experts agree that the experts should continue to work on the finalisation of the part of their report concerning the possible organisational changes; cultural improvements and internal procedures of the Group after in-depth discussions with the full Bureau in the coming months.
You can find the full report here.
