IPP convinced the Chamber of Deputies to post on the official website detailed expenses related to each MP and to act towards absenteeism in the Parliament. We look forward to learn about a similar concrete commitment of the Romanian Senate

5 years of advocating for transparency and accountability in the Romanian Parliament lead to the following concrete result:

IPP convinced the Chamber of Deputies to post on the official website detailed expenses related to each MP and to act towards absenteeism in the Parliament.

We look forward to learn about a similar concrete commitment of the Romanian Senate

Bucharest, May 7th, 2009 ■ Institute for Public Policy (IPP) congratulates the President of the Deputies Chamber, Mrs. Roberta Anastase for taking the lead in the Parliament with regards to two important initiatives that IPP has been advocating for 5 years now:

• decreasing absenteeism  – President of the Deputies Chamber issued a bill through which to amend the current Law on the Deputies and Senators’ Statute in order to publicly expose the deputies missing the parliamentary sessions via the official web page. IPP’ opinion is in fact that such phenomenon could be better counteracted if actual sanctions for skipping the sessions are enforced by a technical staff on which political influence to be eliminated at the minimum possible. Issuing the bill means that final decision will be adopted by the plenum of each of the Chambers and no longer by the group of MPs representing the Standing Bureaus.
• displaying detailed information about each MP expenses while performing the mandate, on the web page of the Deputies Chamber/the Romanian Senate. IPP suggested that such information will be released on a monthly basis, yet we salute the decision of the Chamber of Deputies which states that such information will be displayed every week. The initiative was endorsed by the Standing Bureau of the Deputies Chamber which implies that the decision has to be implemented by the administrative staff.

We would like to remind our partners and readers that in February this year, after a series of consultations with the President of the Deputies Chamber, IPP sent a letter to her that required the publication of all detailed expenses associated to the MPs, starting with May 1st, 2009. Although the above mentioned initiatives have just been initiated, the fact that they have been publicly assumed involves a huge responsibility of the Deputies Chamber’ President that will make her work towards enforcing it. Institute for Public Policy will further monitor these engagements in order to make sure that decisions are indeed followed by concrete measures.

In what concerns the Romanian Senate, IPP issued a similar inquiry to the President Mircea Geoana asking him to adopt the decision of displaying detailed information about the senators’ expenditures, using the official web site  of the institution. If the Senate will not address IPP’ s inquiry in due time, IPP will continue to access information on the spending using the legislation regulating citizens’ access to public information and afterwards will copy and disseminate the information to each electoral constituencies that members of the Senate’ Standing Bureau were recently elected in.

IPP would like to thank all partners that supported our campaigns in all these years in which through press conferences, studies and monitoring reports and even through displaying information on our website, we remained committed to the very important principles of transparency and accountability.
 
For further information, please contact the Director of IPP, Mrs. Violeta Alexandru at + 4 021 212 3126 or by email: violeta@ipp.ro