Gagging the European Parliament?

European Parliament’s parliamentary questions system is a pale imitation of the traditional PQ system, is bureaucratic, slow, and produces responses that would not be tolerated in other parliaments, writes Dick Roche.

Dick Roche is the former minister for European Affairs of Ireland.

In many countries, parliamentary questions (PQs) are crucial in the democratic control process. They empower MPs to examine individual issues, require political and administrative leaders to defend their actions and responsibilities, and are a source of information for citizens and the media.

Dramatic decline

PQ numbers increased between 2010 when over 11,600 questions were tabled, and 2015, when just under 15,500 were submitted. That growth declined in the 8th Parliament and the current 9th Parliament, and in 2023, only 3,703 questions were tabled.

In the four years 2020 to 2023, just under 20,500 PQs were answered, while, for comparison, between February 2020 and November 2023, over 200,000 parliamentary questions were answered in the Irish Parliament, Dail Eireann.

MEPs can submit 20 questions to the EU Parliament every three months.

The rules also require that questions be submitted for the approval of the Parliament’s President before being forwarded for an answer. Where similar questions have already been tabled, MEPs are ‘encouraged’ to either refer to an answer already given or to await the answer to a question in the process.

The EU Parliament’s Oral Parliamentary Questions and Question Time rules are extraordinarily restrictive.

Questions for “oral answer with debate” must be submitted to the president of the parliament, who refers them to the Conference of Presidents, which decides the questions that make it to the Parliament’s agenda. The questions on the agenda must be given to the Commission at least one week before the Parliament sits on which they are to be taken. Regarding the Council’s questions, the notice period is three weeks.

Only 57 oral questions were taken in the EU Parliament in 2023.

Question time, often the focus of public attention in national parliaments, is tightly restrained in the EU Parliament and “may be held at each part-session for up to 90 minutes on one or more specific horizontal themes to be decided upon by the Conference of Presidents one month before the part-session.”

MEPs selected to participate in question time have one minute to put their question, and the Commissioner has two minutes to reply. The MEP has 30 seconds for a supplementary question, and the Commissioner has two minutes to respond.

Slow and slipshod responses

The Parliament’s PQ system is further undermined by slow response times, as replies to “priority questions” should be answered within three weeks and other questions within six weeks.

MEPs note these requirements are “more honoured in the breach than the observance”.

An analysis conducted recently by the office of an MEP found that very few standard questions are answered within the six-week target period and that even the ‘priority questions’ regularly take longer than the required three-week response time.

There is also widescale criticism regarding the quality of the Commission’s responses. Replies are criticised as dodging the issues raised, incomplete, misleading, dismissive, and bordering on disrespectful.

It seems fair to comment that the tenor and content of the PQ responses would not be tolerated in any national parliament.

A curious alliance

For those familiar with PQ systems, the passivity with which MEPs have adjusted to attempts to suppress the use of PQs in the EU parliament is a surprise. It is hard to envisage other parliaments quietly accepting pressure to curtail their PQ systems.

Brussels has had a curious alliance on the issue, as the desire to curtail PQs has not been confined to the Commission. Similar desires have been flagged within the Parliament itself.

In a question tabled in April 2015, a shadow rapporteur on the 2016 EU budget recorded that he had “managed to persuade the main political groups to reach a consensus on the matter” of reducing the number of parliamentary questions.

Draft Rules of Procedure circulated in 2014 contained a clause to maintain the overall volume of questions within “reasonable limits.”

An internal memo produced in the Parliament at the same time by a highly respected senior staffer is reported as stressing the need to “reduce access” in some MP activities, including submitting written questions.

There is an economic cost to the parliamentary question process. Commissioner Timmermans replying to the PQ mentioned earlier suggested a cost of over €7.5 million for processing the 15,489 questions tabled that year.

But there is also a democratic cost. Sadly, the dynamic between the Commission and the Parliament currently favours the former.