7 Amendments of Bas EICKHOUT related to 2018/2190(DEC)
Amendment 5 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Recalls that in June 2017, the Authority’s Management Board adopted a new policy on independence, and welcomes several concrete improvements therein, including increased transparency on the identity of Member State experts working at the Authority; welcomes also that the Authority committed to publishing, from 2018 on, a yearly report on independence related activities, as an annex to the Authority’s consolidated annual report, highlighting interests found to be problematic;
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Notes that the European Parliament has repeatedly called on the Authority through its annual discharge reports to implement a two year cooling off period which would prevent experts with financial interests linked to companies whose substances are evaluated by the Authority from sitting in the Authority's scientific panels or working groups;
Amendment 7 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 b (new)
Paragraph 7 b (new)
7b. Regrets that, in relation to the two year cooling off period, the 2017 independence policy appears to include the obligation to screen experts' interests only in relation to the mandate of the scientific group that the expert is applying to; Calls for the policy to be updated without delay in order to ensure that experts' interests are viewed within the context of the overall remit of the Authority, as repeatedly called for by the Parliament;
Amendment 8 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 c (new)
Paragraph 7 c (new)
7c. Regrets that research funding from industry is not considered relevant to the cooling off period as long as the amounts at stake do not rise above 25% of the total research budget managed by the expert and/or their research team; Calls for the funding threshold to be lowered to 10% and for it to apply to all industry funding combined, not just to individual sources;
Amendment 9 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 d (new)
Paragraph 7 d (new)
7d. Regrets that public-private partnerships (PPPs), contrary to the previous independence policy, are now considered as public funding in the context of the cooling off period; Calls for PPPs, which can jeopardise the independence of the risk assessment process, to be considered as private funding;
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 e (new)
Paragraph 7 e (new)
7e. Welcomes that experts from Member States will now have to file a public declaration of interest with the Authority; insists that these declarations are checked by the Authority and made public;
Amendment 11 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 f (new)
Paragraph 7 f (new)
7f. Is convinced that the Authority should be allocated a sufficient budget and resources to ensure that it can hire independent experts free from conflicts of interest;