Check parliamentarians’ voting records and formal political activities of your MEP candidate (6 days left to the Euroelections June 2009)

Users can look up MEPs' individual voting records or access voting data according to nationality or political group affiliation.

Source: EurActiv [edited]

Citizens will be able to track the voting records of their MEPs ahead of next elections following the launch of a new website making such details easily accessible to the public. VoteWatch.eu was developed by political scientists from the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Free University of Brussels (ULB). Those involved include Sara Hagemann of the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think-tank, LSE professor Simon Hix, Doru Frantescu of the Qvorum Institute in Bucharest and Adbul G. Noury, associate professor of economics at ULB.

VoteWatch.eu is described as a “not-for-profit organisation” supported by the Open Society Institute, an NGO, Burson Marsteller, a consultancy, and Electionmall.com. The VoteWatch.eu project – which seeks to boost the transparency of EU decision-making and improve the quality of debate – collates publicly available attendance, voting and activity data on MEPs on a single, searchable portal.

The project “provides detailed information about parliamentarians’ voting records and formal political activities – from committee work to parliamentary reports – and includes easy-to-access information on the political coalitions that are formed around policy issues,” reads a statement on the website. “We’re not campaign-oriented, party-political, or receiving any money from the EU institutions or government organisations,” explained project leader Sara Hagemann of the European Policy Centre (EPC), a Brussels-based think-tank. “All the info is publicly available, but it’s difficult to find. We’ve collated it all,” she said.

Users can look up MEPs’ individual voting records or access voting data according to nationality or political group affiliation. The search tool allows users to identify whether an MEP voted with or against his or her government or political group’s line on a particular issue.

“Cohesion scores” displayed alongside the results allow for comparisons with members’ previous votes on similar issues or alignment with the party line, allowing users to track how the positions of their MEP or a political group have evolved over the years. “There are shifting coalitions in the European Parliament, just like the shifting coalitions in the US Congress,” said Simon Hix of the London School of Economics, another of the site’s developers.

‘No naming and shaming’

The information on VoteWatch.eu is purely objective. “This is not a naming-and-shaming site, and I think it’ll be difficult to use the site for this. It is not subject to any editorial manipulation. It means people can now use the information that the Parliament is providing. Before, this was not the case.” One drawback of the website is that it can only track roll-call votes, and not electronic or show-of-hands ones. “But all the most important votes, and all those that involve lobbying, are roll-call,” Hix said.

Site ‘must not hide’ EU institutions’ failings

But EU Ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros warned that the initiative must not be allowed to hide the European Parliament’s own communication troubles, and especially not those of the Council. “Citizens will not be satisfied until all legislative deliberation is made public,” said Diamandouros, expressing his belief that with the upcoming Swedish EU Presidency committed to improving transparency, the issue is “likely to acquire even more importance in the years to come”. .

Hailing the launch of the tool, EU Ombudsman P. Nikiforos Diamandouros said the best way of increasing trust in the Union was to improve transparency of decision-making. “Lack of transparency in the legislative process, alongside difficulties in accessing documents, is by far the most common complaint I hear from citizens,” he said. “Transparency did not feature highly on the EU agenda until recently, but it’s at the forefront now. The Access to Documents Regulation was a key landmark, because it made openness the rule and secrecy the exception. But the situation is still far from perfect,” Diamandouros said.