EU Parliament hammers out long-awaited anti-harassment reforms

STRASBOURG — The European Parliament is thrashing out a revamp of its anti-harassment reforms in a closed-door meeting of top MEPs Monday evening, amid fears that many cases in the institution are flying under the radar because victims fear coming forward.

At a meeting of the powerful Bureau of 20 top MEPs, including President Roberta Metsola and her 14 vice presidents, MEPs will chew over a slate of reforms that have been cooked up during seven months of talks. Already this year, two MEPs — Mónica Silvana González and Monica Semedo — were sanctioned for psychologically harassing staff.

Looming over the deliberations is a recent survey carried out by an in-house campaign group called MeTooEP, which found that of the 1,001 respondents, just under half (484 people) had experienced psychological harassment, 16 percent (159) experienced sexual harassment, and 7 percent (67) faced physical violence. The majority of respondents were civil servants; MEPs’ assistants were the next biggest group.

The last reform of the Parliament’s internal anti-harassment policy was in 2018, during the previous legislature. Since then there have been several Parliament-wide calls to improve the institution’s internal workings, most recently a report voted on by a majority of MEPs on June 1. However, it is up to a select group of MEPs — not the full plenary — to make internal reforms happen.

Several tweaks proposed by the so-called quaestors — five MEPs tasked with administrative affairs — are now on the table, such as setting deadlines to speed up investigations into alleged harassment, making management training mandatory for MEPs, creating an “amicable termination” clause to help assistants quit Parliament more easily, and establishing an independent mediation service.

But according to over half of the vice presidents — who have a majority vote in the Bureau — these reforms may not be enough, considering the scale of the problem.

On Friday, eight Parliament vice presidents from the Socialists, Renew, Left and Greens groups, sent Metsola a letter — obtained by POLITICO — demanding the changes go further. They want sanctions for MEPs who don’t take anti-harassment training, a merger of the two advisory committees that investigate cases, and audits of how the Parliament handles complaints.

They also want to hear back from Secretary General Alessandro Chiocchetti on a number of points in October, particularly on holding an awareness-raising campaign in the Parliament and making sure all staff undergo anti-harassment training.

One major sticking point has been the question of who sits on the advisory committee tasked with investigating complaints that involve MEPs. The reforms under discussion only envisage minor tweaks to its composition but the Greens and other campaigners have called for independent legal and medical experts to be given voting rights along with the three MEP members.

A separate committee that represents the 2,000 accredited parliamentary assistants also wrote to the Bureau, in a letter seen by Playbook, asking MEPs to back all the proposals. “We are confident that the decisions you take will make the Parliament a leading institution in the field of anti-harassment policy,” the assistants wrote via the committee.

Asked whether MEPs will take a final decision Monday, Parliament spokesperson Delphine Colard said: “The impression is that it concludes but I cannot preempt the decision in the Bureau.” The next scheduled meeting of the Bureau will take place after a long summer break, in September.

Barbara Moens contributed reporting.