A VOTE

Mirosław Piotrowski

All kinds of activity – like giving speeches, work in commissions, participation in delegations or tweeting etc. –are not monitored by any organ of the EP. If during one day ballot an MP for the European Parliament does not gain fifty percent of ‘roll-call votes’, that is, name votes registered electronically, the authorities of the EP will reduce his salary by half. So, the process of ballot will be monitored on a regular basis. It must be added that the EP authorities do not care about how an MP votes, that is, whether he is for or against or refrains from voting. Simply he must vote. After the ballot on screens there appears a number of MPs taking part in it and the division: the number of those who are for, against or refraining from voting. Every sustained electronic vote is, certainly, included into the mentioned ballots and statistics. It is obvious but I emphasize it because recently the authorities of our Chamber began to behave in a bizarre way. It is all about the recent voting on implementing the famous article 7 of the Treaty about the European Union, that is, sanctions towards Hungary. Two thirds of all votes were needed to it. However, it turned out that such a majority did not exist, so the chairperson of the EP excluded refraining votes from the category ‘votes’, although they were really given electronically and registered. This operation allowed for artificial reducing quorum and accepting the resolution. Hungary is going to appeal to the Tribunal of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg. From the formal point of view they are on the losing position. However, we must remember about double EU standards.

I will only remind that when during one debate the British MP Nigel Farage said that the chief of the European Council Hermann Van Rompuy present in the aula then, ‘has charisma of a wet rag’, the chairperson of the EP fined him with three thousand euro. When during the last debate about Hungary one of MPs called the prime minister Viktor Orban ‘rubbish’ present in the aula, and another one compared him to Goebbels, the chairperson did not even wink an eye. May he reflect on it yet? And returning to our ballot about Hungary and double standards, it is worth noting that MPs who pressed the middle refraining button, do not have to be afraid that they will lose their subsistence allowance or other apanages. The EP authorities defined their votes as ‘given’ for the inner usage and also outer needs, that is, an ideological resolution, the same votes were treated as ‘not given’. And why not to recall the prophetic words here said by Józef Wissarionowicz Stalin who said that it was not important who and how votes but who countes votes…

Translated by Aneta Amrozik

Niedziela 39/2018 (30 IX 2018)

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