Leave your comments on EU Vote Watch

Dear sir or madam,

Welcome to the MEP-page of EU Vote Watch.
EU Vote Watch offers you the possibility to comment on your listed voting record. This is because it is understood that there are several reasons for a vote in favour or against an amendment or resolution. We greatly value your comments and expect them to add to the value EU Vote Watch has in helping EU citizens to make their choice for the upcoming EP elections.

How to post your comments on the site:
Send an e-mail to Chris Nobel through Chris Nobel with 'MEP comment' as the subject. To prevent misuse, we kindly request you to add a phone-number in your message where we can contact you during office hours in order to confirm the origin of the comments.
Your comments will be published unedited in the language(s) you provide them in. Friends of the Earth Europe will publish your comments as soon as possible after receiving them, but is not liable for any delays. Friends of the Earth Europe does not accept any responsibility for the content of MEP comments.

Friends of the Earth Europe and the other environmental organisations involved have carefully selected 10 issues which reflect a wide range of environmental topics. This was done independent from the results this would bring. We do however understand if you do not feel fully represented by the choice of issues. FoEE therefore will consider further proposals by MEPs (and NGOs) for decisions which should be presented on the EU-votewatch webpage. For this, you would need to provide us with a description of the decision and the exact (electronically recorded) voting results.

Should you find any mistakes in the voting results, please also contact christian.nobel@foeeurope.org - we will correct them as soon as possible.

Your sincerely,
the EU Vote Watch team

Don't draw conclusions too quickly!

There are many considerations a Member of European Parliament (MEP) makes before he or she votes in the European Parliament (EP). Sometimes MEPs vote tactically and 'sacrifice' a certain vote in order to win another, one of greater importance to them. Also, MEPs may vote against an environmentally friendly piece of legislation because they think it should have been even stricter.
Therefore, a member with a for a certain topic may not necessarily have an unfriendly attitude towards environmental issues. Friends of the Earth Europe and its partner organisations have tried carefully to avoid this kind of misunderstanding, yet do not guarantee that an individual MEP's voting record directly reflects that individual's attitude towards the environment.

It should also be noted that in order to provide European voters with meaningful information, we based our information on behaviour on a selection of controversial votes in which the European Parliament was split. Votes in which the entire parliament voted in favour of the environment might therefore be underrepresented. In general, the European Parliament has often played a constructive role in strengthening environmental legislation.
This gives the voter all the more reason for voting in the upcoming election! A high turn-out will strengthen the authority of the European Parliament in leading decision making in Europe.

So, besides looking at individual MEPs, we suggest voters to also consider the overall voting results of national political parties, EU political groups in the EP, and Member States.
In addition, MEPs are invited to comment on their voting records. Comments will be put on the webpage without editing. We suggest that EU Vote Watch visitors look at these comments before drawing conclusions.