Centre right, conservatives and far right are opposing the introduction of mandatory anti-harassment training for members of the European Parliament (MEPs) at the beginning of their mandate, a source from the European Parliament close to the matter told Euractiv.

A vote on the report is due on 20 March, but German socialist MEP Gabriele Bischoff, a member of the Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee (AFCO) and nominated rapporteur for the procedure, said that last week, the right-wing members of AFCO disagreed with the idea of introducing the mandatory training.

The EPP member of the AFCO committee is the German Sven Simon, who told Euractiv that “what we are opposing is a procedure in contravention of the [European] Parliament’s rules”.

The German center-right representative did not provide detailed clarification on which specific part of the rule is being violated by the procedure of the report.

Following several cases leaked to the press of MEPs accused of physical and psychological harassment of the staff in recent years, the European Parliament initiated a reform to reinforce anti-harassment internal procedures.

The European Parliament’s reputation was put at stake after different cases of MEPs harassing its staff were leaked to EU media.

In a resolution adopted on 25 April last year, the Parliament’s Women’s Rights Committee assessed the internal procedure for dealing with harassment cases as inadequate.