There is an urgent need to restore citizens’ trust in Parliament. Today, 77% of French people believe that their deputies are corrupt!
The National Assembly and the Senate should finally become exemplary and transparent.
Moreover, the President of the National Assembly, Claude Bartolone, had promised when taking office to make the Assembly “a house of glass, transparent, exemplary, irreproachable.”
It’s time to remind him of his promise! Because although progress has been made, it has been largely in response to the Cahuzac scandal in 2013, and that progress is still insufficient.
Transparency International highlights four proposals for an exemplary Parliament: transparency on parliamentary allowances, a ban on employing family members, the creation of a genuine status for parliamentary assistants, and the creation of an independent control body that can investigate and, if necessary, sanction breaches of parliamentary ethics.
There is no need for a new hypothetical and distant law to achieve this.
The members of the National Assembly and Senate offices can actually set the much-needed new transparency rules.
They are actually meeting this Wednesday for the last time before the end of the legislature.
And although they have reacted very little to the Fillon scandal, they could make the right decisions!
