A new report issued by an organisation monitoring the work of the European Parliament shows that Malta’s five MEPs are among the most active in the institution.
The three Labour and two Nationalist MEPs have so far the second best attendance record in plenary sessions and the best performance for report drafting, one of the most influential aspects of an MEP’s mandate.
According to the report, the Maltese delegation was present for an average 92 per cent of all the plenary sessions held, only surpassed by their Austrian colleagues who attended 94 per cent of the sessions.
The worst participants in plenary sessions in the first 18 months of the legislature, from July 2009 to last December, were the Italians, the Romanians and the British.
Possibly, the best certificate given to the Maltese MEPs in the report is their record in report drafting, with an average of 2.5 reports each, almost twice the average of second placed Portuguese MEPs.
They also managed to get a good ranking in terms of the average number of parliamentary questions put per MEP, placing eighth among the 27 delegations.
They placed ninth when considering the average number of speeches made.
On an individual basis, VoteWatch shows that Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil has the best record out of the five for attendance and drafting of reports and his colleague from the same party, David Casa, has the best record for parliamentary questions tabled to the Council and the Commission.
The Maltese MEP with the lowest attendance record was Labour’s John Attard Montalto, although he still was present for 88 per cent of the sessions. On a general level, the report says that although the European People’s Party is the largest group in the EP (with 36 per cent of the seats), it is not in a dominant position when it comes to winning on key votes. The chances of EPP winning votes depend on coalition formation patterns as well as on the internal cohesion of each of the main political groups.
In contrast, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe held the balance of power most of the time in this legislature, able to choose to form a winning centre-right majority with the EPP or a winning centre-left majority with the Socialists and the Greens/EFA. As a result, ALDE has so far “won” slightly more than the EPP in voting situations, which was not the case in the previous Parliament.
The report says that the “grand coalition” (EPP+ALDE+S&D) remains at the core of most decisions on constitutional affairs, foreign policy, agriculture and fisheries. But, this coalition is increasingly opposed by the other political groups. Moreover, the new Parliament has seen more left-right splits in votes in a number of policy areas, such as the environment and public health, civil liberties, gender equality or development.