The Transparency Commissioner of the Canary Islands, Noelia García Leal, has not admitted a complaint against the Parliament of the Canary Islands for having removed from its website the information it offered until November regarding the collection of allowances by the seventy deputies.
The institution of the Transparency Commissioner "lacks the competence to control the fulfillment of active publicity obligations" by the Parliament of the Canary Islands, García Leal points out in her response.
The complaint was filed by the president of the Association for Transparency in the Canary Islands (AxTeC), Mikel Prat, to whom the commissioner clarifies for informational purposes that "the Parliament complies with its legal obligations, which are to publish on the transparency portal the remuneration of the deputies and their economic and social protection regime."
However, the commissioner specifies that her interpretative criterion in the areas in which she does have competence is that public information "be presented in the clearest and most accessible way possible."
Precisely, the removal of information in a "clear and accessible" way regarding the monthly collection of allowances by each deputy was the origin of this complaint, according to Miguel Prat, who has expressed his "disappointment" with the response of the Transparency Commissioner, to EFE.
In his opinion, Noelia García Leal, former deputy and former mayor of Los Llanos de Aridane for the PP, "has relied more on her political profile than on what her position represents." "She has forgotten that she is at the service of the citizen, not the Parliament of the Canary Islands," he added.
The Commissioner for Transparency and Access to Public Information is an auxiliary body of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, and its head is appointed by the autonomous Chamber.
For Mikel Prat, it is "a lack of respect" that the Transparency Commissioner subscribes to the thesis of the Bureau of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, which basically consists of telling the citizen who asks about the allowances to consult the current legislation on their own and "make their own calculations" based on the attendance data of each deputy, according to Prat.
The information on the monthly income from allowances of each parliamentarian was public and accessible from January 2017 until its removal last November, coinciding with the publication in the media that the parliamentarians had increased their allowances by 131% from one year to another.
Faced with this circumstance, AxTeC appealed to the Transparency Commissioner, who can oversee the autonomous and local administrations with the exception of the Parliament itself. The resolutions of the Bureau of the Parliament in response to requests for information are only appealable through administrative litigation.
Recently, the Bureau of the Parliament rejected a request from a journalist from the EFE Agency to republish the information on the allowances, as had been the case until November.
In its response, the Bureau of the Parliament does not explain the reasons for not providing the requested information and refers the applicant to the general information on the economic regime of the deputies and the data on attendance at parliamentary meetings.
The Law on Transparency and Access to Public Function of the Canary Islands obliges public administrations to provide information "in a clear and understandable manner" and without any limitation other than those established legally.
In its internal regulations on the application of the Transparency Law, the Parliament of the Canary Islands commits to publicizing information related to its activity in an "active" manner, as well as to publishing it "in a clear, structured, and understandable manner for interested persons and, preferably, in reusable formats."
The Transparency Law is in the process of revision at the initiative of the Government of the Canary Islands, which wants to unify it with the Law on Citizen Participation of the Canary Islands, regulations that date from 2010 and 2014, respectively.
This legal reform is currently in the process of public consultation, before the autonomous Government sends it to the Parliament of the Canary Islands, which will be the institution in charge of processing it and, if applicable, approving it.
The Transparency Commissioner does not admit the complaint about the collection of allowances from the Parliament
Noelia García has clarified that "the Parliament complies with its legal obligations, which are to publish on the transparency portal the remuneration of the deputies and their economic and social protection regime"
February 25 2025 (13:23 WET)
