In European political institutions, what are women in charge of? How many are in key positions? How many are in decision making roles? Out of the 28 EU members states, only two are lead by women: Germany and Poland.

While Angela Merkel is widely seen as one of the most powerful and influential politicians in the world, very few women can say the same. Openpolis, in its recent MiniDossier “Trova l’intrusa“, analyzed the role of women in political institutions across Europe and Italy. The goal was to understand how many women hold key political positions: what are women in charge of? How many are in key positions? How many are in decision making roles?

The results were very clear. The number of women in political institutions is still very low, and very few of them hold positions of power.

Even though women represent more than a third of members both in the European parliament and in the European commission (37% and 33%, respectively), both in the European Council and the Foreign Affairs Council the percentage drops to 10%. In the most important economic and financial institution of the old continent, Ecofin (Economic and Financial Affairs Council), only 8% of members are women.

In national parliaments of EU members states, men are always the majority (in best of circumstances, Sweden, women reach 44%), in 17 countries the percentage is lower than 30%, and in the governments of three countries (Greece, Slovakia and Hungary) all ministers are men. There are only three countries in which the government is half men and half women: France and Slovenia (both at 50%) and Sweden (52%). Furthermore, of the 5 women heads of state, two are so for house laws (queen Elizabeth II and Margaret II). If we consider only the heads of government, the only female colleague of Angela Merkel, is the Polish premier Beata Szydło.

In national governments, women hold 50% of labour and social affairs ministries, 43% of ministries related to family care, youth, senior citizens and sport, 40% of education and culture. At the same time, only 14% of justice ministers are women, percentage drops to 11% for finance ministries and to 7% for foreign affairs ministries. No EU country has a woman leading the ministry of economy.

Last year, the British media debated an interesting question of how changes to national law are affected by decisions taken at the EU level after Viviane Reding, a former EU commissioner, put forward that it could be as much as 70%.

This struck me as very interesting so I decided to take a look at how much it could be in my country, Czech Republic. The lower chamber of the parliament keeps excellent track of which bills are tied to the EU. This information is available as open data. It is therefore relatively easy to retrieve and analyse bills in bulk to gain valuable insight into the legislative process.

European institutions do not directly dictate the law. In most cases, only an outline of required changes is approved at the European level and individual member states are more or less free to decide on details. I took a look at all bills proposed since 2004 when the country entered the EU.

It turns out that about 30% of all bills transpose the European legislation into the national law. These bills are introduced by the government (as opposed to MPs who can also introduce bills) and constitute about 50% of government legislative activity. This is more or less constant over time – even Eurosceptic government in 2006-2010 proposed these “eurobills” about as much as other governments.

Once introduced, the “eurobills” are much more likely to successfully complete the legislative process. A chart below shows shares of bills according to their status in various electoral terms. In the past terms (2002-2013), all bills that were “not approved” are considered rejected. In the current term, the “not approved” bills can still complete the legislative process.

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News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Argentina, CIPPEC, with support of a public TV channel, organized a series of dialogues between young voters and five candidates running to become Mayor of Buenos Aires. To increase reach, each dialogue was broadcast using Google Hangouts and provided opportunities for interaction over social networks.

In Germany, Parliament Watch won a lawsuit calling on the parliament to disclose information on lobbyists who have registered with the Bundestag.

In Uganda, Parliament Watch released a report entitled “Assessment of the Accountability Committees of Parliament”. The assessment found that accountability committees struggle to review and respond to Auditor General reports in a timely manner, creating a large backlog of reports. The assessment concludes with a number of institutional, administrative, and political recommendations to help accountability committees deal with these challenges.

In Croatia, GONG and Code for Croatia launched a new website that allows citizens to request information from more than 6000 public authorities, including the Croatian Parliament.

In Norway, Holder de Ord launched Sagt i Salen (Said in the Parliament), a new feature that shows how many times a certain word has been used in parliamentary debate. This tool facilitates political speech analysis by showing how many times a word has been used in a given year, by a political party, or by an individual MP.   

In Ghana, the Center for Democratic Development began to implement a project called “Building Transparency, Participation and Feedback around Local Government Budgeting and Planning Systems.” The project aims to promote change in “attitudes and behaviors of both the Assembly staff and the citizenry for improved transparency and accountability in the management of local revenue.”

In Georgia, Transparency International released a policy brief calling for the creation of a verification system that would review public officials’ asset declarations. Evidence gathered by TI suggests that a verification system would help ensure that public officials’ asset declarations are complete and accurate. TI also released and assessment of Georgia’s national integrity system.

In Tunisia, Al Bawsala issued a press release with recommendations for improving the draft right to information bill that is currently being considered by the parliament.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In Argentina, a number of CSOs, including Directorio Legislativo, Poder Ciudadano, and Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia (ACIJ) have partnered with the newspaper La Nacion to launch an interactive website revealing the financial statements of MPs, public officials, and judges. This video (Spanish) explains more about the project, which was 10 years in the making.

In Germany, the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany organized a youth civic hacking event. OKFN Germany’s August activities report is available here. Meanwhile, Parliament Watch examined extra income received by German politicians.

In the United States, the Sunlight Foundation announced procurement open data guidelines to help shape how governments release data on their procurement process. Elsewhere in the U.S., GovTrack founder Josh Tauberer was featured in a profile, the city of San Francisco will test online participatory budgeting, Code For America discussed why civic hacking matters, Fast Company profiled PopVox, and the makers of Politify (now called Outline) finalized a deal to create a “public policy dashboard” for the state of Massachusetts. Outline was also a winner of a Knight Award (the most recent of which went to community-focused open government projects).

In Georgia, Transparency International Georgia detailed key aspects of the new “personal data protection inspector” position and pushed for a proactive publication of government information. JumpStart Georgia also issued a similar call, highlighting its work to make election and parliamentary data open and accessible.

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News from the OpeningParliament.org community:

In India, a recent news article covered PRS Legislative Research’s organizational model. PRS Legislative Research recently published a report on the activities of the Lok Sabha, joined the debate on pending corruption bills, and explored parliamentary and constitutional issues of new statutory entitlement legislation. Elsewhere in India, the government launched an Accountability Initiative to provide resources for accountable governance and procurement. TechPresident covered CGNet Swara, a project aiming to empower citizens to address their problems using voice messaging. The Times of India detailed the lack of transparency in political donations. 

In Spain, OpenKratio became the 130th organization to endorse the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness. OpenKratio supports a number of open government initiatives, including the Hummingbird Project, which aims to bridge the programmer/web journalist communities with the Spanish Congress to facilitate data access. Recently, OpenKratio announced a collaboration with the Andalucia Open Left political party and reported on a study on big data and political participation. A new app where users can express their opinion on current legislation is now available. Elsewhere, Global Integrity highlighted a “low-tech” approach to improving transparency in rural areas of Spain by Graba tu Pleno.

In Mexico, legislators in the Chamber of Deputies sought to change the content of transparency reforms in a way that civil society organizations said would be a major step back for government openness. Amid this vast criticism, legislators rolled back these changes at the last minute before passing the reforms through the Chamber late in the evening, September 22. Further commentary is available from Fundar here.

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(This news update, by Dustin Palmer, is a continuation of that posted last week. Be sure to check back next week for news from this week (which isn’t covered in the update below… got it?))

News from the parliamentary monitoring community:

In Pakistan, during a citizens forum hosted by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), the Speaker of the Provincial Assembly of Punjab praised the role of PILDAT in improving the performance of the Punjab Assembly. The forum marked the release of a report by PILDAT on the performance of the provincial assembly over the last five years, including recommendations to further strengthen it.  The report is available in English and Urdu.

In Colombia, Congreso Visible released its yearly report on the legislature, examined the inadequate division of labor in the Congress, and considered the challenge of making legislative information visible. Additionally, Transparencia Por Colombia helped citizens to create a mural of transparency during a public meeting with the local planning council of the Bosa district of Bogotá. Citizens and local authorities renewed the Bosa Pact for Transparency and Governance. Transparencia Por Colombia also presented at the Andesco National Congress.

In Mexico, the LALT Network recently called on the international community to oppose efforts by the Mexico House of Representatives to restrict access to information and transparency. More context on these efforts - and the opposition’s response - is available from FUNDAR here and here. One factor is the lack of historical legislative data and research, which hampers the legislative process. Also in Mexico, Visión Legislativa urged legislators to to make more legislative information available, even as the Supreme Court ruled against disclosure requirements.

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