The Congress of Deputies has reproached this Monday all the parliamentarians -deputies and senators- that only 10% of them have published their full agendas, including other “institutional” meetings in addition to those that have to do with compliance with its ordinary functions. The Annual Report of the Conflict of Interest Office of the Cortes Generales for the year 2022 thus focuses on the meetings that deputies and senators hold with interest groups, known as lobbies, by name in English. This category includes “natural or legal persons or entities without legal personality that communicate directly or indirectly with holders of public or elected office or personnel under their charge in favor of private, public, individual or collective interests, trying to modify or influencing issues related to the development or modification of legislative initiatives”.
A legal loophole allows legislators to circumvent transparency rules with inaccurate asset records and undeclared activities
Further
In October 2020, the code of conduct of the Cortes Generales which establishes the obligation of deputies and senators to make public their meetings with these groups. But the obligation remains unfulfilled by the majority of parliamentarians. “There are a minority of deputies and senators who include in their agenda meetings and activities other than the purely organic ones of the Chamber to which they belong that are related to the exercise of their parliamentary functions (that is, they do not whether they are purely private or personal)”, reads the interior of the report. Congress rejects this information because, it assures, it seems “highly improbable” that such a small number of people hold these meetings.
The Lower House, however, indicates that if the assumption that only that 10% held these meetings was “correct” there would have been “a clear point of improvement” by parliamentarians when it comes to fulfilling their obligations, since in its Code of Conduct, it is expressly requested to be aware of the aforementioned meetings with these interest groups.
In addition, once again the report includes another series of recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the Code of Conduct for Members. Among them, it invites them to avoid standard responses, which they define as those that are already written “in very broad terms” so as to “be able to be used” by members of the same group. This especially refers to those activities that parliamentarians have carried out in the five years prior to the start of the mandate: “It is not credible, nor compatible with the meaning of the norm, that there is a total coincidence between the activities carried out during a period of extensive time by a high number of parliamentarians”, the note states.
Avoid answer-types and blank spaces
Congress also recommends that legislators be “as precise as possible” when referring to declarations of economic interests or “donations, gifts, presents, trips and invitations that they have received, or contributions to foundations or associations that they have made.” The Chamber repeats: “one and the other must be identified as far as possible.” Thus, along these lines, he urges them not to leave anything blank if there are no such activities: “It is better and clearer to write ‘none’, ‘nothing’ or even draw a line”, they settle.
In 2022, according to the Annual Report of the Conflict of Interest Office of the Cortes Generales, eleven new declarations of economic interests were presented in Congress and 26 in the Senate by parliamentarians who had just acquired their status. In both cases, 100% of these statements responded in writing to the section on activities that may condition political activity or have provided economic income. The percentage drops considerably with respect to the section on donations, gifts and benefits –36.06% for the Lower House and 23.08% for the Upper House–.
Finally, more than half of the declarations –54.55% of those of Congress and 84.62% of those of the Senate– responded to contributions to foundations or other associations and only 27.7% and 15.38% gave information about other interests or observations.
