Activities of Margrete AUKEN related to 2022/2141(INI)
Plenary speeches (1)
Activities of the European Ombudsman - annual report 2021 (debate)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on the annual report on the activities of the European Ombudsman in 2021
Amendments (14)
Amendment 3 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Ca. whereas Article 41 of the Charter, on the right to good administration, states, inter alia, that ‘every person has the right to have his or her affairs handled impartially, fairly and within a reasonable time by the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union’;
Amendment 4 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C b (new)
Recital C b (new)
Cb. whereas Article 298(1) TFEU establishes that ‘in carrying out their missions, the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union shall have the support of an open, efficient and independent European administration’;
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G a (new)
Recital G a (new)
Ga. whereas the Ombudsman, in a broad inquiry into ‘revolving doors’ covering a sample of 100 decisions taken by the Commission in 2019-2021, found that the Commission prohibited only two activities; whereas the Commission showed a tendency to underestimate the corrosive effects of officials bringing their knowledge and networks to related areas in the private sector, thus resulting unable to effectively handle this practice, which can erode public confidence in the integrity and expertise of the EU institutions;
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G b (new)
Recital G b (new)
Gb. whereas the Ombudsman examined the composition of the High Level Forum on the proposed EU Capital Markets Union (CMU), which gathered senior industry executives, international experts and scholars, concluding that the Commission, despite being aware that many of the applicants to be appointed members of this group had interests that compromised their capacity to act independently and in the public interest, failed to implement its conflict of interest rules;
Amendment 32 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Strongly believes that citizens’ full access to all documents of the European institutions, bodies, offices and agencies is the basis of a participatory democracy; welcomes the Ombudsman’s efforts to improve public participation in and the legitimacy of the EU decision- making process; points out that the right to refer a matter to the Ombudsman increases citizens’ engagement with and trust in the EU institutions, as it promotes transparency and the good administration of the EU institutions and bodies;
Amendment 34 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6a. Criticises the maladministration by the Commission, which refused to grant public access to documents related to the purchase of 1.5 million medical masks that did not meet the required quality standards, despite the strong public interest in releasing such information mainly related to the protection of healthcare workers; strongly regrets that the Commission disregarded this Parliament’s firm stance on full transparency to be ensured on all actions taken during the Covid-19 Pandemic as, in the framework of the most severe public health crisis in modern times, any lack of transparency constitutes a breach of citizens’ right to information;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 b (new)
Paragraph 6 b (new)
6b. Regrets that Commission is still failing to ensure full and proactive transparency about meetings with representatives of the tobacco industry, thus being in breach of the provisions of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and resulting at odds with a consistent approach aimed at preventing the tobacco industry from having a negative impact on public health policies;
Amendment 36 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 c (new)
Paragraph 6 c (new)
6c. Notes with high concern that the Commission risks undermining the integrity of the EU administration without a more robust approach to the movement of staff to the private sector, as concluded by the Ombudsman following a broad inquiry into ‘revolving doors’; asks the Commission to comply fully and in a timely manner with the Ombudsman’s recommendations, including to forbid jobs temporarily if they pose risks that cannot be offset by restrictions or if restrictions cannot credibly be monitored and enforced as well as making its approval of a new job conditional on the staff member obtaining a commitment from the new employer to publish any restrictions on its website and to publish the decisions on staff members’ new jobs faster;
Amendment 37 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 d (new)
Paragraph 6 d (new)
6d. Expresses deep concern about the Commission's maladministration case arising from its failure to follow its own rules on managing conflicts of interest when putting together an expert group to give advice and policy input in relation to the EU Capital Markets Union; regrets that the Commission's measures to mitigate potential conflicts of interest resulted very general and insufficient leading to have only 7 of the 28 group's members truly independent; calls on the Commission to put in place the most stringent ethical rules in order to prevent conflicts of interest, fully complying with the Ombudsman's recommendations;
Amendment 38 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 e (new)
Paragraph 6 e (new)
6e. Recalls that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) underlined that the requirement of impartiality, which is binding on the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies in the performance of their tasks, is intended to guarantee equal treatment, which is one of the foundations of the European Union; highlights that this requirement aims at avoiding situations of potential conflict of interest and covers any circumstances an official or agent is called upon to decide on, given the fundamental importance of the guarantee of independence and integrity as regards both the internal functioning and the external image of the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union1a; _________________ 1a see judgment of the General Court of 12 October 2022 — Vasallo Andrés v Parliament, T-496/21, paragraph 21; and judgement of 27 March 2019, August Wolff and Remedia v Commission, C 680/16 P, paragraph 26;
Amendment 43 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8 a (new)
Paragraph 8 a (new)
8a. Deplores that the Council is still failing to comply with the transparency standards of a parliamentary and participatory democracy as required under the Treaties and requested by the Ombudsman in her Special report of May 2018; firmly believes that the Council needs, without further delay, to highly improve its transparency standards in order to fully uphold citizens’ democratic rights and increase citizens’ trust in the overall EU decision-making process by, inter alia, enabling citizens to hold their governments accountable;
Amendment 44 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8 b (new)
Paragraph 8 b (new)
8b. Criticises the Council, which is persisting in preventing citizens from having timely access to legislative documents during ongoing legislative procedures, thus breaching citizens’ treaty-based right to participate in the democratic life of the Union; regrets the Council's refusal to give full public access to its documents, when negotiations on the draft ‘Digital Markets Act’ were ongoing, which amounted to maladministration;
Amendment 52 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Takes note of the fact that the Commission, as stated by Vice-President Věra Jourová during the public conference ‘Access to EU documents: what next?’, stands ready to continue the legislative work, in partnership with the co-legislators, on the two proposals to update the Transparency Regulation on access to documents, and to withdraw the proposals with a view to tabling an updated one; believes that any revision of the Transparency Regulation must result for the public to have full access to all documents concerning the various Union activities held by all EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies;
Amendment 68 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Welcomes the opening of an inquiry into the Commission’s role in assessing the sustainability of gas projects listed as projects of regional significance by the Energy Community – which brings together the EU, countries in the Western Balkans, countries in the Black Sea Region, and Norway – as the gas projects might not have been covered by an adequate sustainability assessmentfollowing a complaint by a civil society organisation, which denounced that the Commission had failed to ensure that the sustainability of gas projects was properly assessed before being included on the list; recallcriticises that these projects were evaluated according to a methodology formerly usedn inadequate and no longer used methodology by the Commission for its list of Projects of Common Interest, which is currently inadequate and no longer used; considers that, particularly in the current geopolitical energy context, energy projectsthe EU must only promoted or and financed by the EU should be evaluated in the most transparent, consistent and participative way possible, without further delay, truly renewable energy sources and projects, ensuring a fully transparent and participatory evaluation, consistent with its goal to accelerate the transition towards a highly energy-efficient and fully renewable-based economy;