LAUNCH OF EU INTEGRITY WATCH

According to Transparency International (TI) EU Office, Members of the European Parliament must be more transparent about the on-the side activities they do while in public office. The findings come from the new EU Integrity Watch database which will for the first time collect all available information on the outside activities and incomes of MEPs. The database provides a comprehensive overview of MEP's outside revenues. It can be used to show differences between countries, political groups and national parties and to monitor potential conflicts of interest where their private interests conflict with their public duties. It allows MEPs to be ranked based on the number of outside occupations, board memberships or other political mandates they have as well as the income derived from these activities.

Key Findings

• 398 or 53% of MEPs have outside activities
• Combined those 398 MEPS earn between € 5.8  and € 18.3 million per year on top of their MEP salaries
• 175 earn at least € 500 per month from outside activities, 12 MEPs even exceed € 10,000
• 1 MEP has declared 68 different outside activities
• Seven declarations are completely blank (no previous or current activities or revenues)
• 46 MEPs indicated a previous income of less than € 1,000 per month, according to their declarations. Of those, 8 were members of the previous Parliament who failed to declare their previous mandate.

Transparency International Recommendations

1. Members need to provide more detailed, accurate and timely information on their activities and incomes to allow a meaningful monitoring of potential conflicts of interest.
2. The European Parliament administration should better check the declarations for plausability and possible errors.
3. The financial thresholds on the declaration form (e.g. 'income between € 1,001 and € 5,000 per month') should be narrowed. Current rules that allow MEPs who earn more than € 10,000 per month to provide no further information should be changed.
4. All declarations should be translated into all EU languages to allow all European citizens to monitor all their MEPs
5. An independent ethics committee should monitor compliance and issue binding recommendations for sanctions against MEPs in case of false declarations.
6. The Code of Conduct of the European Parliament needs reform. It needs to be fully respected in word and in spirit and violations need to be sanctioned.
7. To further improve public monitoring of potential conflicts of interest at the Parliament and the Commission, TI-EU suggests the adoption of a legislative footprint mechanism- a record of all meetings between lobbyists and lawmakers. 181 MEPS have already committed to using this as part of TI-EU's anti coruption election pledge.
8. Also TI-EU continues to advocate for a mandatory Transparency Register of Lobbyists that covers the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council.
9. Standardize as much of the information as possible to allow a better comparison and groupings and to connect with other databases, such as the Trabsparency Register.
10. Publish all declarations of interest in a centralised and searchable manner, including historical declarations.