The activity of Romanian MPs
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The Public Politics Institute released last Friday a study on the parliamentary activity for the last session, February-June 2007. The criteria used for evaluating the Romanian MPs were their presence or absence to the vote, the number of legislative projects proposed, the number of questions addressed to the public authorities and their loyalty for the party (expressed through their votes).
The results of the study show that some MPs had a low legislative activity, with low rates for all of the criteria considered, but also some others that developed an intense activity, representing the interests of the citizens.
One of the remarkable things the study emphasizes is that the most well known figures on the political scene have the lowest activity in the Romanian Parliament. According to the Public Politics Institute, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, head of the Great Romania Party, had the lowest voting presence, of only 2.1%, followed by Anca Boagiu, ex Minister for European Integration, with 2.77%.
As regarding to accomplishing the function of interpellator, 57 MPs (out of 469) have never the addressed a question to the Government.
The most active political group concerning the legislative proposals is the Great Romania Party, though Doru Frantescu, the coordinator of the study, declared: “There’s a habit within the Great Romania Party, one of its members initiates a legislative proposal and all others come to sign it”.
The aim of the research is on the one hand to put some pressure on the political groups for justifying the inactivity of their members and, on the other hand, to provide an easier access to information about MPs’ activity, contributing in the same way on raising the public authorities’ transparency.
This study precedes another research of the Public Politics Institute, which will be developed for monitoring the activity of the Romanian MPs in the European Parliament.