Talk:Europe Transparent

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[edit] Non-Inscrits or Greens/EFA?

The article says:

Europa Transparant (Transparent Europe) is a new Non-Inscrits party from the Netherlands in the European Parliament ... Van Buitenen and the number two on the list, Els de Groen who has written about corruption scandals in Eastern Europe, have joined the fraction Greens/European Free Alliance as independent members.

Now, I'm a bit fuzzy on the relationshp between European parties and EU parliament groupings, but surely the party can't be said to be NI if its members have joined the Green/EFA grouping, correct? My guess from reading this is that the party, which was brand new when elected in 2004, started off as an NI because of its new and unique political stance, and later joined the G/EFA grouping without formally joining the European parties. But that's just a guess. :) Still, this needs to be worked out -- there are currently links to this party from both the Non-Inscrits and European Greens - European Free Alliance pages, and this page doesn't clarify matters. --Jfruh 04:48, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think you've got it. There was a lot of horse-trading at the start of the current session, particularly with all the new MEPs from the ten accession countries. It looks like Europa Transparant started off as Non-Inscrits and then decided to join the Greens/EFA group, but they are not members of the European Greens (a fully fledged party) or the European Free Alliance (a federation) — they just sit with the group in parliament. The European Parliament website has both of their MEPs down as being part of the Greens/EFA anyway [1] so I've removed the NI bit from the article. My guess is that because (according to the article) "because this goal is very time-consuming they won't participate in the normal system of debates, reports, meetings, etc" they have just chosen to go along with whatever the G/EFA say and whichever way they vote most of the time so as to avoid having to scrutinise everything independently, while they are busy rooting out 'opaqueness'. This is my guess anyway. — Trilobite (Talk) 06:27, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)