Press release of the Inter-Parliamentary Union
Geneva, 17 April 2000
N° 94

At a press conference today (11.00 am, Press Room No 1, Palais des Nations, Geneva) the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), in the presence of its Secretary General, Mr. Anders Johnsson, is launching a monograph on the subject of the parliamentarian, the elected representative of the people and a key figure at the heart of any democracy. The Parliamentary Mandate is a global comparative study drawing on information submitted by over 130 national parliamentary chambers from all corners of the world. The author is Marc Van der Hulst who heads the Legal Service of the Belgian House of Representatives. Van der Hulst looks at the nature, duration and exercise of the parliamentary mandate and provides a detailed description of the legal and material resources to which the parliamentarian is entitled: salaries, allowances, facilities and services. Particular attention is paid to the privileges and immunities enjoyed by parliamentarians.

Anders B. Johnsson, Secretary General of IPU, points out that "as the author himself states, the fact that certain privileges are enjoyed by parliamentarians does not mean that they are above the law. It is simply an acknowledgement of the fact that, given the significance and scope of the mandate with which they are entrusted by the people, acting in full sovereignty, minimum guarantees are necessary to ensure that they fulfil that mandate independently and without hindrance."

The IPU monograph (published in English and French, with a Spanish version under preparation) also looks at the duties of parliamentarians, and more particularly the requirement to demonstrate the utmost probity and to set an example by guaranteeing the kind of transparency that is essential to sound public administration. It looks at the "cleaning up" of politics in general and of parliamentary activity in particular. While it is questionable whether politics and parliaments are more "immoral" today than in the past, it cannot be denied that public opinion, outraged by press reports of scandals involving bribery and other forms of corruption, demands increasingly irreproachable behaviour from its elected representatives.

"Aware of this loss of confidence and anxious to recover it, parliamentarians in many countries have accepted ethical restrictions of varying severity. The spread of declarations of assets is particularly significant in this regard" says Van der Hulst. "The fact that several parliaments apply rules of conduct or codes of ethics to their members is very revealing" adds the IPU Secretary General.

In his conclusions, Van der Hulst notes the "the professionalisation of parliamentary mandates, which seems to be a virtual fait accompli at the global level. In other words, the parliamentary mandate has become a "job" that is supposed to keep parliamentarians employed on a full-time basis and provide them with a decent standard of living. This trend is discernible, first and foremost, in the fact that parliamentary remuneration in almost all systems has assumed the form of a regular salary, the aim being to allow any member of the public, regardless of means, to enter parliament. The trend is also reflected in the fact that, alongside the traditional incompatibilities designed essentially to safeguard a parliamentarian's independence vis-à-vis the other branches of government, a growing number of prohibitions and/or limitations on concurrent mandates are being imposed".

The Inter-Parliamentary Union, the world organisation of parliaments created in 1889 and based in Geneva, currently has 139 member parliaments and five affiliated regional parliamentary assemblies. The Inter-Parliamentary Union has a Liaison Office with the UN in New York.

Contact person in Geneva for interviews (on the spot or on the phone): Mrs. Luisa Ballin, tel.: +41.22.919.41.16 or 919.41.27, fax: +41.22.919.41.60, e-mail: lb@mail.ipu.org or cd@mail.ipu.org. In New York Mr. Santiago Romero tel. +1.212 557 5880, fax +1.212 557 3954, e-mail: ny-office@mail.ipu.org

ANNEX:

CONCLUSIONS OF THE STUDY ON THE PARLIAMENTARY MANDATE: SOME EXTRACTS

Salaries and Allowances:

The author of the IPU monograph points out that "parliamentarians almost everywhere now receive a basic salary that no longer bears any relationship to the number of meetings attended. The only exceptions to this rule are some African countries where members continue to receive daily allowances, and Cuba, where deputies receive an allowance equivalent to their salary before entering parliament throughout their mandate." In general, writes Van der Hulst "the basic salary is established by reference to salaries in the civil service (average salaries or salaries for a particular grade), but a number of the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe calculate parliamentary salaries on the basis of the average monthly wage multiplied by a specific factor."

Incompatibilities

On the question of the status of the parliamentarian, the need for independence has always been a prime reason for establishing certain incompatibilities. According to the study "there has recently been an upsurge - particularly in Western Europe - in measures designed to establish additional incompatibilities unrelated to the goal of safeguarding members' independence in the strict sense of the term. These initiatives have less to do with preventing corruption or financial and other scandals than with ensuring that parliamentarians have sufficient time in which to discharge their duties. In pursuit of this goal, countries such as Belgium, France and Italy have restricted plurality of mandates, while other countries have introduced ineligibility criteria (United Kingdom) or publicised parliamentarians' activities (Germany, United States of America). Since 1996, members of the Israeli Knesset may not earn income from any occupation whatsoever, although this restriction takes effect only six months after the beginning of a mandate."

Declaration of personal assets/interests: "British style" and "French style"

The scandals that have recently rocked the political boat in a number of countries, in particular in Western Europe, have led to Parliaments feeling the need to "clean up politics" and justify their existence vis-à-vis an increasingly critical population. So states "The Parliamentary Mandate"."This" says Van der Hulst "is probably why many countries are moving in the same direction, although, given the current state of legislation, one cannot yet speak of a fully fledged declaration of assets (Austria, Czech Republic, Latvia) and why other countries (Chile, India) are considering proposals to introduce a declaration of assets."

"In this area, as in many others, the United Kingdom has undeniably played a pioneering role. The "British-style" declaration of interests has been copied by a large number of countries. Its chief merit consists in the fact that the declaration is not a mere set of figures but focuses on the possible links between MPs and private interests. The key concept is therefore transparency: the public must at all times be aware of the interests that an MP defends " says the author. Parliamentarians may have an appreciable financial or material interest in a discussion or debate in the House and they should draw attention to it so that it may be taken into account (e.g. by replacing them on a committee)".

The "French-style" declaration of assets reflects "a greater degree of mistrust of public office-holders (perhaps because it is more recent and hence more strongly influenced by recent financial scandals). At the risk of over-simplifying, we may even assert that its key concept is the fight against corruption rather than the promotion of transparency. This type of declaration serves primarily to establish whether a member has accumulated wealth at an abnormal pace during his or her mandate.

The declaration of assets/interests is thus becoming one of the key factors in the endeavour to make politics more transparent and to shed light on the relationship between money and politics."

Lobbying

"The Parliamentary Mandate" also looks at parliamentary lobbying, which has long been a North-American practice and is still essentially a Western phenomenon. "In the United States, for instance, a member may be contacted by lobbyists for multinational companies or trade unions. In some Western European countries, on the other hand, trade unions are associated with political parties (or were long associated with them in the past). Their influence is thus already discernable in the membership of electoral lists and they have no need to contact "their" parliamentarian to press their concerns. Parliamentary lobbying in other countries is a widespread phenomenon, but it has nevertheless been deemed necessary to assist parliamentarians in preserving their "virtue" by establishing safeguards against lobbyists."

Codes of Conduct

The IPU study also looks at "codes of conduct", where the British leadership is undisputed. "Lord Nolan's report has no equivalent in its field and will undoubtedly inspire many more parliamentarians in the future. Its merit lies in the fact that parliamentarians are viewed as men and women like anybody else, so that one should neither be unmindful of the temptations to which they are exposed nor fall into the opposite trap of treating them all as crooks. Unlike other attempts to clean up politics, codes of conduct seem for the time being to be an essentially British practice." The author goes on to say that "the few countries outside the British tradition that have gone furthest in this regard (Germany, Japan) confirm the rule, since they have always been strongly inspired by the British and American parliamentary systems. This is not to say that other countries have stood idly by. Countries influenced by the French model, for example, have adopted legislation to counter cronyism. Unlike the United Kingdom, however, they have hitherto failed to develop a global perspective."

Parliamentary privileges: non-accountability

The IPU states: "Parliamentary non-accountability is undoubtedly one of the most effective means of ensuring the proper democratic functioning of parliamentary systems, since it provides parliamentarians with watertight protection against prosecution for words spoken or votes cast in parliament." The elected representatives of the people "can thus fulfil the mandate entrusted to them by their constituents without fear of any retaliatory measures on account of their opinions." Unfortunately, parliamentary non-accountability is, like any other fundamental freedom, sometimes ignored. Many cases of breeches of Parliamentarians' freedom of speech are denounced in the reports of The IPU's Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians.

As a "fundamental freedom" of parliamentarians, parliamentary non-accountability is also an essential prerequisite for enabling parliamentarians to defend and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, but it should not become a privilege that can be abused with impunity. "The trend towards reliance on ordinary law is attributable to the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult in Western countries to justify the well-nigh "absolute" privilege of parliamentary immunity" (the protection of elected officials from civil or criminal prosecution for actions taken outside the framework of their mandate). "On the one hand, public opinion is less willing than in the past to accept special treatment and, on the other, "fear of the Executive" is frequently viewed as an exaggerated pretext used by parliamentarians to safeguard privileges that suit them only too well".

The IPU concludes that "while parliamentary non-accountability is universally guaranteed and a very stable privilege, more and more countries are limiting the scope of parliamentary immunity, doubtless on the grounds that the guarantees currently afforded by ordinary law are sufficient to protect parliamentarians against any form of pressure. Experience shows, however, that immunity is still the Achilles heel of parliamentarians in countries in which democracy has not yet struck deep roots".