Case: Policy coherence in general

30-06-2011 MEP Catherine Grèze wins the Fair Politician of the Year Award.

Yesterday (June 29th) Fair Politics awarded the most ‘Fair Politicians’ of each political group in the European Parliament. The top three of each political group was invited and a total of eight MEPs were able to join us, for which we are very grateful. MEP Thijs Berman (S&D) welcomed this year’s nominees as the very first time winner of the Fair Politician Award in 2008.

With 15 points the GUE/NGL group was the first group to be awarded, with Gabriele Zimmer as a winner of the group with 7 points. She earned these by asking PCD related questions during the Joint EU – ACP Parliamentary Assembly. Furthermore, she wrote a report on food security and proposed several amendments on the raw material strategy. The second group was the ALDE group with a total of 22 points. MEP Fiona Hall won 6 of these by asking questions on Raw Earth Elements and due to her membership in both the ITRE and the DEVE committee, she was able to write several amendments on both the ITRE report on the Raw Materials Strategy and on the opinion written on this report by the DEVE committee.

The third group awarded was the EPP group with a total of 28 points. Of this group two MEPs were represented, MEP Filip Kazcmarek with 3 points for writing an opinion on Human rights-, social- and environmental standards in trade agreements and for writing amendments on the report on the CAP towards 2020. The winner of the EPP group was, the PCD standing rapporteur Birgit Schnieber-Jastram with 6 points which she won by writing opinions on the new trade strategy and on the raw materials strategy to which she also proposed amendments. Next to this she proposed amendments on the report on migration flows.

With a total of 51 points, the S&D group won most points in total; however as the S&D group has many more members than the Greens/EFA, relatively they became second and the Greens/EFA group  would then come first. Of the S&D group also two awarded members were present, the first was Marc Tarabella who scored 5 points, he asked many questions on many different topics like the extractive industry in Congo, biofuels, and on the privatization of the coffee industry. Next to this he wrote an opinion on food security. As Marc Tarabella is a member of the AGRI and FEMM committee it shows that not only members of the DEVE committee are able to score high in our monitoring system. On a shared first place for the S&D group was Kriton Arsenis with 6 points which he received  for writing an opinion and proposing amendments on the CAP towards 2020 report; and writing several amendments on the raw material strategy. The other group winner of the S&D was Proinsias de Rossa, who could unfortunately not join the ceremony. He won his points by asking questions on brain drain, patentpool HIV/AIDS and on the conflict mineral law.

The Greens/EFA group won 34 points in total, putting them on a first place when calculated relatively! The top-4 of this group all won 7 points or more. Last year’s winner Franziska Keller won 7 points by writing several amendments on the opinion on migration flows, on the CAP towards 2020 opinion and on the New Trade Strategy opinion. Judith Sargentini was granted 7 points, but  was unfortunately not able to attend the ceremony. Judith Sargentini won points by writing amendments on social environmental standards in trade agreements and on the raw materials strategy. ‘
The group and overall winner of this year’s Fair Politician Award is Catherine Grèze who was unfortunately not able to collect the prize herself due to illness, but her assistant Alice Normand collected the prize on her behalf. Catherine Grèze won points by writing an opinion and amendments on the external dimension of social policy, and by writing several amendments on the report on migration flows, the CAP towards 2020 and the new trade strategy opinions.

All MEPs mentioned that they were very happy with the recognition they received with this prize and by the fact that their efforts were being noticed. They see this award as a motivation to keep on putting PCD on the agenda by asking parliamentary questions, proposing amendments and writing opinions and reports on topics which would enhance PCD. Fair Politics welcomes this and will continue to monitor the efforts of these MEPs in the next parliamentary year to come! But for now we wished the winning MEPs a nice summer break.

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