EU: The president of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell, is proposing major reform to the assembly to try to improve its low public profile and better co-ordinate its work.
In a paper due to be discussed at a meeting of the parliament's political group leaders tomorrow, Mr Borrell proposes that the parliament should focus more on the big political issue of the day, hold more "showcase" debates and set the political agenda.
The paper, Possible Internal Reform Measures, is also highly critical of some aspects of parliamentary work, particularly its failure to connect with the public and media and the poor attendance records of some MEPs.
"Poor attendance of important debates is undeniably an occasional embarrassment to parliament and erodes its credibility in the eyes of the electorate," says the paper, a draft of which has been seen by The Irish Times. However, it says that this problem must be kept in proportion as all parliaments have low attendance at debates and members of parliaments are often busy with various activities.
It says that none of the more radical "carrot and stick" measures proposed so far in other forums and papers on parliamentary reform, such as financial penalties, installation of computers or surprise roll-call votes, should be introduced at this stage.
Mr Borrell's paper says the ideal solution to the attendance problem is to provoke an active wish among MEPs to be present by facilitating lively and interesting debates. This could be achieved by loosening the strict rules and procedures around the management of speaker lists in debates, thereby enabling more MEPs to make a contribution on the floor of the parliament on a catch-eye basis.
It criticises the agendas set for the parliamentary plenary sessions as "documents for the technocratically initiated" and urges changes to the current working calendar. "Titles of debates can be opaque, timings of debates and votes unclear, the order of proceedings not always in line with political priorities, the structure of debates sometime unconducive to interest, liveliness or attendance." Instead, parliament should "showcase" big debates more effectively.
The agenda needs to be more reader-friendly and debates more interactive. Votes should be taken at the end of debates rather than a day or two later, which is currently the case in Strasbourg. The parliament also needs to be focused on big political events rather than allowing its work to reflect the priorities of quite small or specialised interest groups within the parliament.
It recommends that the conference of presidents, which contains the leaders of all seven political parties in the parliament, hold an orientation debate each year to set a programme of four or five key parliamentary initiatives. These initiatives should reflect themes of major pan-European interest to attract interest.
Brian Crowley, MEP for Munster and president of the Union for Europe of the Nations Group, said he welcomed the paper, particularly its emphasis on making debates more lively.