Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), Chair of the ING2 Committee, Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK) and Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR) co-rapporteurs, hold a press conference on proposals to improve Parliament's transparency, integrity and accountability. The transcript is the result of an automatic process. Please check the delivery.

Strasbourg

press conference

fight against organised crime, corruption and money laundering (T)

BILČÍK, Vladimír (EPP, SK)

GLUCKSMANN, Raphaël (S&D, FR)

LOISEAU, Nathalie (Renew, FR)

Press conference by Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), ING2 Committee Chair, Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK) and Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR) co-rapporteurs on proposals how to improve Parliament’s transparency, integrity and accountability

SOUNDBITE (English), Rapha&euml;l GLUCKSMANN (S&amp;D, FR), ING2 Committee Chair, Thank you very much. And thank you for being here. The mandate of the ING2 committee is coming soon to an end, and we are going towards the final report. So it's time to speak a bit, very quickly, I must say, on the what we have done and what we have delivered.

SOUNDBITE (English), Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), ING2 Committee Chair, This committee has shaped a new approach to security issues in this House. For a very long time, European institutions have been naive, have been naive and have been weak. And the time for naivety has come to an end. And this was a true meaning.

SOUNDBITE (English), Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), ING2 Committee Chair, The essential message of this committee for three years now and the at the end of this mandate, I am very happy that we are tomorrow voting as a report on the transparency and integrity of the democratic process inside the European institutions, because we have to understand something.

SOUNDBITE (English), Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), ING2 Committee Chair, Corruption is not an issue of morality. It's not an ethical issue. It's a matter of survival for our democratic institutions in very turbulent time. Corrupt institutions are weak. And what we want to see is the European Community Union that is strong enough to resist its adversaries. And I think that this report is a huge step in the right direction when it about shaping a strong EU.

SOUNDBITE (English), Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), ING2 Committee Chair, I must say that I wish the other institutions, uh, would follow this path and actually understand that we are in a hurry and that we cannot wait anymore. And so I would just add one point is that we were promised by the President of Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the package of defence of democracy, and that this package has been postponed and that we are waiting for it, and that the last message of this special committee is that we cannot wait to defend democracy.

SOUNDBITE (English), Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), ING2 Committee Chair, And that this Parliament is overwhelmingly impatient to receive this package. So now the rapporteur will speak in details of the report that we are going to vote tomorrow.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, Thank you. Good afternoon to all of you. There is something special about this special committee and about this final report. You have three MEPs from three different political groups, but in full agreement about the state of play and about what needs to be done. And it tells something about the quality of our work for three years. And this final report builds on what we have learned, what we have done and what we consider useful for the future.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, And I would like to thank the chair of this special committee, Raphaël Glucksmann, when this committee is coming to its end, for his leadership on this. I also would like to thank my co-rapporteurm Vladimír BILČÍK, because we decided together not to stop where we are. That is to say not to take the 14 points plan of President Metsola as a point of arrival, but as a starting point for our recommendations.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, And not to take the Commission's proposals on the ethics body as something that is sufficient. We need more of more of that. Why do we need more? We all heard about Qatargate. For us in the special committee it didn't come as a total surprise that foreign states or foreign entities were trying to influence our Parliament. This was already what we had been working about in the previous periods of ING 1 and ING 2.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, Which helped us draft very rapidly recommendations. These recommendations will push for two parallel directions. The first one is more transparency and accountability from the members of this Parliament, and the second one is more security to protect the work of the members of this Parliament. More transparency, more integrity.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, That's quite simple. Declaration of assets, transparency of who we meet, who pays when we travel, sanctioning non-ethical behaviours, things that should already have been in place for quite some time but were left to the goodwill of the vast majority of good people. But goodwill and good people is not enough when there is mistrust in our institutions.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, We have to demonstrate through transparency that we can do more. And when I talk about transparency, it's not only for MEPs, but it's also for NGOs wishing to work with us. They are very often finger pointing, elected members saying that they should know more about us. That's right. But we should know more about them as well, if we have to work together.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, And security on this, I echo what Raphaël Glucksmann has just said. This has been a gross word in this Parliament for years. We were supposed to be only an open house, but we have become a house open to malign interferences. It means that we really want security to be taken seriously. We deal with a lot of sensitive issues. Right now. It's obvious with the war in Ukraine, with dealing with procurement or delivery of military equipment to Ukraine.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, Everybody understands it's sensitive, but when we deal with trade issues, it's a sensitive as well. When we deal with regulation of platforms, it is sensitive, very sensitive information. So we have to protect our work, to protect our premises, to protect or our I.T. infrastructure, to protect our procurement procedure, to protect the circulation of persons in this Parliament, and to have security clearances for people working on sensitive issues.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, Once more, it sounds like common sense, but at the same time, it's a cultural revolution. And we do hope that as well as it was voted in the special committee, it will be broadly adopted in a plenary tomorrow.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, Very good afternoon, everyone. And I want to thank my dear colleagues who are standing next to me. Both. My Madame Loiseau and Raphaël Glucksmann, but actually all colleagues in the committee. This has been a committee where we've had a very cooperative atmosphere, very collegiate cooperation. And I think we have taken seriously not just our political role, but our institutional role.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, And I hope even though the committee is coming to an end, the legacy of the committee will last much beyond not just the remainder of our mandate, but beyond the next few years. Indeed, and I can only echo what has been said. We have focussed on two important goals in this final report and we want to leave this behind as part of that legacy which should have a life of its own within this institution in very tangible ways.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, The first one is to preserve public trust. If people are to trust in democracy, they must have public trust in democratic institutions. And of course here at the origin of the story of our report was a scandal. Everyone's aware of it. And we have to learn from this and act upon it. And I'm very proud of this institution which reacted very swiftly, including our leader, the President Metsola, who took some decisive steps in the very days after the Qatargate.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, And also very much supported our work on the final report. The second, and probably the tangibly lasting goal, should be future proofing our institution against all sorts of threats which we are facing. And we really want to inject with this a much greater awareness across this House, of the kinds of threats that we are facing and improve the security culture in this House and across the EU institutions.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, Since Russia's brutal attack against Ukraine, we have all been exposed and we have all been made aware of a number of influences which have attacked us, our democracy, this Parliament, for a number of years, and we must become much more resilient when it comes to foreign interference. And I think in our report we have a good balance.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, We need to remain an open parliament. Yes, but in order to remain open parliament, we must safeguard our own safety and security. We must maintain, and this is crucial, the freedom of our respective mandates. But hand-in-hand with that goal, also some basic set of rules we all have to follow.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, And when it comes to undue influences, they not only come from the outside, as we saw in the scandal at the end of last year, but they also come from within our institution, and we really have to protect ourselves against these and defend ourselves against these. So in specific terms and tangible terms, we must reinforce appropriate security clearance for officials and staff dealing with sensitive documents.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, I think this also has to do with our commitment to become really serious policy makers when it comes to, for instance, external affairs, we must better protect ourselves against undue influences from foreign contractors, and we must be more vigilant when we hire people. We need a comprehensive check on technology, which we use in this House.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, Because as we saw and as we have seen since February last year, there can be enormous costs if we underestimate these sorts of technological dependencies or dependencies on third countries and outside actors. We must also be very clear on the institutional roll of the different bodies in this House which are responsible for executing international relations, foreign affairs, diplomatic missions and we must speak always on behalf of the Parliament in our institutional roles.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, And yes, we must be more transparent, especially on a number of issues. But when we conduct our foreign relations, we must do so in full transparency. When it comes to, for instance, payments by third countries, for trips for members of this House. So we really need to look at how we can best implement the 14 point plan. I think this is something that the report contributes to and looks also beyond at some of the systemic measures.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, How we can already very soon and very quickly raise awareness about the kinds of threats and security issues we should all deal with. It has been a great experience for the past three years when the committee started nobody imagined it would last for three years. And it's great that we are still standing here and standing here with what I believe is a very important report in this mandate.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, And I very much hope that we can contribute in a meaningful way to the work of this House so it's much better equipped to deal with the challenges we are facing. Thank you.

Q&A, Question regarding on the extention of the special Committee.

SOUNDBITE (English), Nathalie LOISEAU (Renew, FR), Co-rapporteur, -

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladimír BILČÍK (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, -

SOUNDBITE (English), Raphaël GLUCKSMANN (S&D, FR), ING2 Committee Chair, -

Q&A, Question about the concret measures coming out from the report. -

SOUNDBITE (English), Vladim&iacute;r BILČ&Iacute;K (EPP, SK), Co-rapporteur, -