MEPedia

Welcome to the MEPedia Portal on Powerbase
The MEPedia Portal on Powerbase profiles current Members of the European Parliament, focusing on issues of transparency, conflicts of interest and the revolving door. An A-Z list of articles on both individuals and institutions is here. The portal editors are William Dinan and Barçın Uluışık. Powerbase has a policy of strict referencing and is overseen by a managing editor and a sysop and several associate portal editors.

What is MEPedia?

MEPedia is a resource for members of the public across Europe to find out basic information about selected MEPs, their financial and political interests, their voting history and comments on issues related to transparency, accountability and conflicts of interest. We hope these webpages will become a useful tool for European citizens to track the performance of their elected representatives in Brussels. At present this portal is only available in English but we hope over time to expand it to include more languages, more profiles and issues.

European Parliament Elections 2009 European Parliament elections took place from 04-07 June 2009. Election Campaign The Election Campaign is a collaborative project that aims at increasing public effectiveness in the European Parliament. The campaign tool supplies information on MEP candidates' status prior to the 2009 European Parliament elections considering the four areas of pledges prepared and presented to them. The issues covered were: Lobbying transparency and ethics, demanded by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU): to replace the current flawed lobbying register with a mandatory EU lobbying register that includes a list of all individual lobbyists, the legislative dossiers lobbied on and detailed information on the money spent on lobbying per client, to ensure that the Parliament takes all necessary steps to ban conflicts of interest, including barring MEPs from working as lobbyists while in office, to secure full transparency around Expert Groups and other groups advising the European Commission, and strong safeguards against privileged access and unbalanced composition of Expert Groups. Reforming financial architecture, demanded by the European Attac Network: to help develop legislation that obliges all corporations, including banks, to report on a country by country basis all their transactions and balance sheet figures, in order to increase transparency, curb tax avoidance and tax evasion and fight corruption, to help develop legislation which introduces strong regulation over investment funds (in particular hedge funds and private equity funds) as well as the establishment of a supervisory body (that would for example ban speculation on food commodities and curb tax evasion), to help introduce taxes on financial transactions and corporate profits to equilibrate income distribution and to support the financing of global public goods such as education, health and the ecological conversion of the economy. Just EU trade policy, demanded by the Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B): to urge the Trade Commissioner and the President of the European Commission to immediately stop the implementation of the Global Europe strategy, including a moratorium on the conclusion of bilateral and regional free trade agreements, to support a cross-committee investigation and stakeholder consultation process into the impacts of EU trade policies on development, social, environmental, human and women’s rights, in Europe as well as in third countries, to sign a resolution in the European Parliament advising a stop to the WTO’s Doha Round and calling for democratic reform of the international trading system and its rules of the game, to demand an international assessment of the responsibility of trade and financial liberalisation in the global financial and economic meltdown, the global food crisis and the climate crisis. Corporate accountability, demanded by the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ): to support the development of a new legal framework for corporate accountability, which will hold companies operating in the EU and their directors legally responsible for the social and environmental consequences of their operations and those of their subsidiaries worldwide, to support transparency by implementing mandatory environmental and social reporting with accurate, comparable and comprehensive information, to support legal measures that allow victims of violations of human rights and environmental law by companies operating in the EU the possibility to go to a European court, even if the violation took place outside the EU. The Election Campaign is a collaborative project by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU), the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ), the Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B) and the European Attac Network.

Categories All pages associated with the MEPedia Portal are listed here. There are also a number of distinct categories listed below: MEP - Pages on MEPs Conflicts of Interest - Pages on MEPs with conflicting interests Political Parties - Pages on political parties that are represented in the European Parliament Revolving Door - Pages on people who change have taken positions in both government and private corporations Press Release: Friday, 08 May 2009 MEPedia goes Live! What do MEPs actually do? Why should I care about what’s going on in Brussels? As the European elections loom, citizens across the EU are asking themselves these questions. MEPedia, launched today, in intended to help European electors to find some answers. MEPedia is an online wiki database profiling the interests, performance and record of MEPs. It is available at http://www.mepedia.eu The database is intended as a resource for interested electors to find information about the interests and policy stances of MEPs. At present, MEPedia is heavily focused on issues of accountability and transparency, as we believe that these are fundamental to making EU politics more democratic and responsive to citizens needs. We have catalogued instances of potential conflicts of interest and we are building an overview of where MEPs stand on the critical questions of transparency and openness. Over time the focus of the database will expand to cover other issues and track the voting performance of MEPs. Please take a moment to visit the website. – we’d be delighted to hear your comments and feedback. MEPedia is a collaborative project based on a vision of an informed and engaged European citizenry. If you would like to find out more or get involved contact the project coordinators through the MEPedia homepage. Notes for Editors: MEPedia is a project of Spinwatch, a public interest group monitoring spin, public relations and lobbying in contemporary politics. MEPedia is participating in the civil society run Election Campaign 09 - http://www.electioncampaign.eu/ For more information about MEPedia please contact Will Dinan at will.dinan@powerbase.info or on 0044-7979-323348 How You Can Contribute MEPedia depends on the help and contribution of volunteers across the European Union. This website is intended to be a resource not just for the public during European Parliamentary elections, but it is also meant to serve as an information portal that can help European citizens scrutinise the performance of their MEPs during the parliamentary term. In order to achieve this we need help. If you can add any information that is relevant to the profiles of MEPs featured on this site then we would like to hear from you. MEPedia is unlike wikipedia, in that we currently restrict access to the database in an effort to ensure that pages are properly and fully referenced, and to guard against pages being corrupted or edited unfairly. If you have any information that you think would be suitable for inclusion on the MEPedia website then please contact the portal editors by email at barcin ‘at’ powerbase.info and will ‘at’ powerbase.info We will keep this editorial policy under review. In time we hope to expand the number of contributors to this site, the languages MEPedia is published in and the range of issues that the pages focus on. Initially we are emphasising information relating to transparency and accountability, trade and environmental policy. A Note on Translation We have made our best efforts to translate honestly and accurately into English the information on these MEP profiles. If you notice any inaccuracy or errors in any of the pages of MEPedia please bring this to our attention. You can contact the portal editors by email at barcin.uluisik AT powerbase.info and will.dinan AT powerbase.info.

References and Resources

• Election Campaign, Pin Down Your Candidate Now!, accessed 05 June 2009.
• European Parliament, Calendar of part-sessions 2009 - European elections 4-7 June 2009, accessed 07 March 2009.
• European Parliament, Your MEPs, accessed 07 March 2009.
• Friends of the Earth, EU Vote Watch, accessed 07 March 2009.
• Friends of the Earth Europe, Election Campaign, accessed 30 May 2009.
• Rowell, Andy, "Too Close for Comfort?" Spinwatch, July 2008, accessed 26 November 2008.

Powerbase History Powerbase is a collaborative venture initiated by SpinWatch in collaboration with LobbyWatch, GM Watch Red Star Research and Corporate Watch, but put into effect by a wide variety of volunteers and independent researchers. Contributors are now working on 19,417 articles.

Disclaimer:

Powerbase is an encyclopaedia of people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda. It is a project of the SpinWatch.

Contact:

Email:

William Dinan: will.dinan AT powerbase.info

Barçın Uluışık: barcin.uluisik AT powerbase.info

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