Ms Emily O'Reilly:

It is a good question. I think the test has to be whether the rules work, but what makes them work? I think what makes any sort of ethical framework work is that the people who are charged with monitoring and implementing it can work independently. At the moment I do not really think that is the case within the Parliament because it is comprised totally of MEPs. They cannot act independently. For example, if they get a tip-off or a complaint or read something in the media about something - for example, an MEP alleged to have broken a particular rule - they cannot of their own volition decide to investigate it. They have to wait.

As for sanctions, when people look back at whatever sanctions have been applied to MEPs who have been deemed to break some of the rules, it has happened very rarely. One interesting thing is that one of the issues was around the fact that many MEPs' flights to third countries are paid for by those third countries. At the moment the rules do not forbid that, but the flights have to be declared. One newspaper did a survey looking at January to November of last year and the declarations that were made in respect of flights paid for by third countries, and there was more or less a flat line. Then you come to December - Qatargate happened in early December - and the line just jumps because suddenly there was a vast piling in of people to declare the trips they had made that they had not declared before. That suggests that the implementation of the rules is lax and that people think, "If I do not register this meeting, this gift or these flights, nothing much will happen." That is another problem. For any body to work well - let us take the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPOC, in Ireland - it has to act independently, it has to be able to investigate on its own initiative and it has to have access to whatever it needs to have access to. Then it can make recommendations or take whatever actions it chooses to take. If, however, it does not have that, no matter what it is called it will be a weak body and will not be able to enforce adequately the rules that are there. No matter how great the rules sound, if they are not implemented they are worthless.