Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-07-Speech-1-197"
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"en.20080707.21.1-197"2
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"Mr President, I rise to present to you a report from the Committee on Constitutional Affairs concerning our Rules, where we have examined the question of the threshold – the minimum threshold necessary to constitute a political group in our Parliament.
Changing hats and speaking as the coordinator of my group instead of rapporteur, I can tell colleagues that my group is willing to go along with such a compromise – if indeed it is a compromise – and we can all unite around that. If it is not a compromise – if that is not acceptable – then my group will continue to support the proposal for 30 instead of for 25.
All parliaments that have a system of political groups have, of course, a minimum threshold. Normally one does not allow a single Member or two Members to create a political group; it is necessary always to define what that threshold should be. And, as our Parliament continues to grow, it is logical that we pause to reflect and think what should be, in the next Parliament, the threshold for creating a political group.
We have looked at this in detail in the Constitutional Committee, and the committee’s opinions were fairly evenly divided. There was a majority of one vote against raising the threshold when we looked at it in committee, although, of course, this matter is now before us again in the House.
We also looked at groups that exist already but fall slightly below the threshold when one or two members leave and whether it is right that such groups should automatically and immediately cease to exist or whether in some circumstances we should allow such groups to continue to exist. Here the committee approved my proposal, which was based on a suggestion of Mr Bonde, the former co-leader of the IND/DEM Group, who pointed out to me what difficulties he, as a group leader, could face, leading a group that was just above the threshold, when one, two or three Members might threaten to leave the group unless they got their way on something or other, thereby effectively blackmailing the group.
On his suggestion, the committee wisely adopted my proposal that, once a group has existed for a certain period of time, we should help the smaller groups by allowing them in such circumstances to have the possibility – we will allow the President of Parliament to have some discretion on this – to continue to exist, even if they fall below the threshold, for a limited period of time until the next constitutive session of Parliament and provided, of course, they still have a reasonable minimum membership: we cannot allow a group to exist with two or three members.
The idea was to find a balance between a reasonable threshold and to give something to the smaller groups, to make sure they are not facing that dire prospect of virtual blackmail by a minority of Members within their group who could pull the plug at any moment.
As I said, the committee hesitated on raising the threshold – it was a majority of one. But that issue is now before us again. At the moment, if you look around the parliaments of the world, we have one of the lowest thresholds that exist for allowing the constitution of a political group. Just 2.5% of our membership can create a political group. When you remember that constituting a group gives those Members extra resources above what ordinary Members get as a Member – extra resources as a group in terms of finance from the taxpayer, in terms of staff and in terms of procedural privileges – it should give us cause to reflect.
Do we want to give such huge resources to what could frankly be a very small and unrepresentative number of Members – 2.55%? My own thought was that this was a very low threshold: it comprises the danger that we give such resources to very small, possibly unrepresentative and even extreme groups. Some people have pointed to the extreme right potentially being able to create a group with such a small threshold if ever they won enough seats.
That is something that it is legitimate to ask. What is the minimum threshold? My proposal had been to raise it to 4%, which is still rather low if you compare it to national parliaments across our Union, still below what is the norm in many national parliaments, but perhaps a reasonable balance. I understand now that some smaller groups that initially opposed this idea are on board for a compromise between the 30 Members that I proposed and the 20 Members of our current rule; they would be happy to go along with a compromise of 25."@en1
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