Website listing MEPs’ attendance records sparks row

A WEBSITE that shows exactly how MEPs vote and how often they attend parliament sessions was launched yesterday, and immediately led to a row between Irish politicians, and changes to the site.

The site, www.votewatch.eu, gives the attendance record of MEPs at the 299 plenary sessions the parliament met to vote on legislation and reports over the past five years.

The first version said that Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald had one of the worst attendance records attending 171 sessions or 57% of the total, equivalent to three of the five years. Just 13 other MEPs had a worse record, it claimed. The figures were quickly removed when Sinn Féin objected, saying she attended 75% of the sessions and stating she was on maternity leave in 2006 when her second child was born.

“The figures are inaccurate. Only an MEP can see the record of attendance and we do not know where the makers of this site got their figures from,” said a spokesperson.

Green Party candidate Deirdre De Burca, challenging Ms McDonald in the June election, was not convinced.

“The European Parliament is a legislative and budgetary assembly, so being there and voting is the nuts and bolts of an MEP’s job. While politicians will have good reasons why they miss occasional votes, this website looks at their performance over five years and provides very valuable insights for voters as to how hard working their representatives have been.”

Fianna Fáil South MEP Brian Crowley had the best attendance record of the 13 Irish MEPs at 94%. Almost half the Parliament’s 778 members attended over 90% of the sessions, the site shows.

Developed by the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the site is modelled on similar ones used to plot the voting patterns and attendance of members of the US Congress. However it covers just about a third of the votes taken which were roll-call votes and not the show of hands votes. But its originators say roll-call votes are used for the most important decisions and will be extended to more votes in the future.

Professor Simon Hix who said he first came up with the idea for the site eight years ago said all the information is publicly available on the European Parliament’s own website, but is difficult to access and to understand.

Even with all the voting of MEPs available, it told only some of the story, as the European Parliament has a say in about half the legislation at the moment. But the member states make the decisions on all legislation and he said they hoped to have their voting records on line soon.

Hans Martens of the European Policy Centre think tank said the European Parliament was very transparent relative to the national parliaments but, up to now, the details were difficult for the ordinary person to find.

European Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandourous welcomed the site saying a third of the complaints he receives from the public about the EU institutions were about a lack of transparency. He said that all decisions made by member state governments on legislation must be public.

He was critical of a proposed revision of public access to documents that threatened to restrict access, but hoped that the Swedish presidency taking over in July and the European Parliament would prevent this happening.

“There is a risk of the citizens becoming alienated, disillusioned and sceptical if transparency is limited,” he said.

The site allows the public to see how often MEPs votes agreed with their political groups line and that of their member state.