Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-17-Speech-4-054-000"
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"en.20110217.5.4-054-000"2
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"−
Mr President, Commissioner, I fully support what my fellow Members, and in particular Mr de Jong and Mr Canfin, have said. I can only regret that Parliament was not consulted before a final decision on the review was taken.
The issue of transparency and expertise is one that we debate on a very regular basis, in particular within the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, where my experience in my field is somewhat comparable to that which Mr Canfin has just demonstrated.
I should like, Commissioner, to emphasise two points. The first concerns the balance of the groups. This is an extremely important issue. The composition is very imbalanced: there are many very large companies, very few SMEs, and above all the industrial sector but not civil society. The fact is, the weight of the groups clearly has an impact on the decisions that the Commission has to take, since it relies on the experts’ reports. If those expert reports were of no interest, they obviously would not be consulted. Consequently, restoring the balance so that it is representative of European society is absolutely vital, and I do not see any proposals in these new rules that favour either SMEs or civil society.
The second question concerns the selection of external experts. It is absolutely vital that we know, or at the very least that you know, exactly who is who and where those people who are talking to you come from. If experts present themselves as independent when in reality they are representing a lobby, the expertise they provide clearly cannot be regarded as a conclusive piece of information.
Extremely strict supervision and monitoring of declarations of interest is therefore absolutely vital to ensure that, if an expert is consulted as an industrial expert, things are at least clear. If he is consulted as a teacher when he is actually the representative of an industry, then things are no longer clear and they are not acceptable. I think that the issue of conflicts of interest is crucial. We have another example of this in the shape of a major problem at the Medicines Agency, which I believe we will have the opportunity to discuss again.
Therefore, I beg you, Commissioner, please restore our faith in the experts, as their opinions inform the decisions that are taken."@en1
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