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This paper discusses the politicisation of fraud within the European Union and continues the author's scries on fraud, supranational investigative arrangements and cross‐border crime. During 1999, the fight against European Community budget fraud became a controversy of central importance within the European Union. This was not because such fraud is wide‐spread, but because as a criminal offence of an all‐European nature it was the point of least resistance from which to construct a European criminal code and a European FBI. During 1998 the corpus juris was proposed as the proto‐criminal code and the next stage in the fight against fraud. This situated the anti‐fraud strategies debate into the conflict between member states and the Commission's alleged agenda for a European superstate. Moreover, with European parliamentary elections approaching, nationalists and Eurosceptics had an interest in exaggerating the problem of fraud in order to depict central European institutions as wasteful and corrupt as well as a threat to the nation‐state. Although since the introduction of the doctrine of subsidiarity, national sovereignty is a fraud in the European context, fraud is also a sovereign issue.

Investigates attitudes amongst decision makers in the European Parliament to the role of information in their work, and their ability to identify, access and evaluate that information most relevant to their needs. Aims to elicit data regarding levels of satisfaction amongst MEPs in relation to information retrieval, and to identify areas of information need which were not being addressed. Describes research methodology and analyses results. Results reveal the wide range of subjects that are of interest to MEPs; that all MEPs have research assistants to help in their work, with an average of 3.5 assistants per MEP; the majority of these assistants are based in the UK and are employed full‐time; and that the most popular sources were unofficial, informal contacts and MEPs’ own files, as opposed to the official EU databases and services. Finds that the main problems faced by MEPs in information retrieval are pressure of time and the overwhelming number and variety of information sources available. Makes recommendations for further research.

In just a short half century, the European Union (EU) has emerged as a paradigm of supranational, continent-based, integrated single economy with its micro- and macroeconomic parameters. The process began soon after World War II. The initial steps, which started with the Benelux Customs Union and the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) of France and Germany in 1951, soon progressed to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 (see Chapter 1). A unique framework of Free Trade Area (FTA) came into existence. Its success called for the Single Europe Act (SEA) in 1986, followed by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, whereby a select group of sovereign nation state economies on one common geography volunteered to become one single economy. The Amsterdam Treaty and the Treaty of Nice followed. The EU-25 as of 2004, on to the EU-27 as of 2007, became an epochal event.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the new Budget Act (2015) and the new budget cycle influence and were influenced by the contextual environment of the Tanzanian parliament and how this changed parliamentarians’ (MPs) budgetary oversight roles.

The paper employed analytical concepts explained in the contextual framework proposed by Alsharari et al. (2015) to explore changes in budgetary oversight roles after the implementation of the reforms. Interviews, video clips and document review were employed in the data collection. Data were analyzed using the thematic approach.

The values of the new Budget Act and the new budget cycle were in conflict with the prevailing institutions, political and power aspects. The MPs modified a few provisions in the new Budget Act and in the new budget cycle. Legitimating budgetary oversight roles as a result of institutional pressure emerged but stopped. Although there was a change in MPs formal powers and MPs involvement in budgetary oversight, there was stability as the change was ineffective.

The paper only extracted relevant aspects of the contextual framework, which were sufficient to achieve the objective of the paper. Moreover, the study was conducted only a few years after the implementation of the reforms. Therefore, it might be too early to reach conclusions. Yet, the paper serves as the basis for further studies investigating changes in budgetary oversight roles after the implementation of the reforms.

In order for the parliament to hold the government accountable to the electorate, there is a need for reforming the nature of the government system, improving MPs capacity, harmonizing Budget Act with prevailing constitution and demonstrating the political will to use MPs’ formal powers. The findings suggest that effective change in budgetary oversight by focusing on formal institutions only is unlikely.

This paper provides a more robust explanation on how the integration of institutional, political and power aspects shape budgetary oversight roles in parliaments. It is the first paper to explore accounting change using the contextual theoretical framework in an organization of a parliamentary nature. The paper responds to Kim’s (2018) call for conducting case studies to explore changes in budgetary oversight roles by investigating potential attributes of institutions when operating in practice.

The main purpose of this paper is to lighten a very big dark room of research regarding parliament and parliamentarians in the Arabic environment. The two researchers of this study tried to investigate the information seeking behavior of Members of the Kuwaiti Parliament (MKPs) in terms of their thoughts, perceptions, attitudes, motivations, techniques, preferences, ways, tools and problems encountered by them towards accessing information.

The authors employed a questionnaire, with a response rate 42 percent.

The study found that MKPs were mainly seeking information to make a parliamentary request/inquiry, to make a speech, and to make a decision. The study showed that the most important sources of information MKPs were seeking for were minutes of sessions, mass media, personal letters and information networks. It was also found that MKPs preferred printed formats, with a very good use of the internet and computers. This study showed MKPs' confirmation of using the English language, beside the use of the Arabic language, as the most dominating foreign language used to access information. The study found that consultants, secretaries and colleagues were the most important assistants of information to MKPs. The currency of information, the limited nature of the library's role to deliver information, and the use of technology tools were the most significant problems encountered by MKPs when they were seeking information.

The paper investigates the topic of parliamentarians' use of information, and as such highlights a topic that has limited previous research.

The paper provides valuable insight into the information behavior of a very important client group.

Being the first study in the Arab world concerned with the issue and topic of information seeking behavior and needs of Arab parliamentarians, it is considered a pioneering and unique study among many studies conducted in the field of both information access and information seeking, especially with this category of information users.

Access to library collections in an era where users want to “get” rather than “find” offers particular challenges. This paper seeks to explore users' needs for bibliographic records in a primarily full text environment.

The paper describes the need for access to parliamentary and library information from the Australian Parliament and its use by Senators and Members. It then outlines the approach taken to develop and implement a new search system, ParlInfo, which applied a repository and search system that provides integrated access to bibliographic and full text information. Launched in September 2008, it offers facets, alerts, RSS feeds and other Web 2.0 functionality to both the Australian public and Parliamentary Network users accessing library collections and parliamentary collections.

The paper offers insights into solutions which meet the information needs of Senators and Members and the public; and the application of library/web 2.0 solutions. It is relevant to organisations seeking to offer a single gateway to their collections.

The paper offers an approach based on understanding the whole needs of users, rather than applying a traditional assumption that resource discovery should be based only on catalogue records through an OPAC.

The paper provides a model based on integrated access to resource through metadata, full text “crawled” from web sites and full text resources, such as Hansards, that can be applied in many organisations.

The paper's value is in thinking about how the catalogue can be “turned inside out” for the twenty‐first century users' needs.

The purpose of this paper is to research the use of accounting information by politicians. Based on the Portuguese Parliament setting, it seeks to understand how useful politicians consider this information to be, what type of budgetary and financial information they use, and for what purposes. Finally, the research also seeks to find out whether politicians resort to expert intermediaries or advisors help them in the use of this information.

Following a qualitative and interpretative methodology, the study draws upon interviews with Members of Parliament in Portugal (and their technical advisors (TAs)) from all political parties, in particular the members of the Budget, Finance and Administrative Modernization Committee (COFMA) of the Parliament.

Research shows that, due to the general lack of knowledge and the complexity of the accounting information, politicians in the Parliament do not use it frequently, only occasionally. To be better or worse informed for the debates and other activities depends on each Member of Parliament’s personal willingness to prepare oneself, notwithstanding some aggregated and previously analyzed information made available by official technical support units. Parliamentarians may also resort to TAs, who prepare the information at their request. Both intermediaries and TAs are deemed important to support parliamentarians’ understanding of more technical budgetary and financial issues.

This paper shows that politicians acknowledge there is room for improving the role of information intermediaries and advisors, who would support them to better understand and use accounting information. Parliamentary groups incharge of hiring advisors, as well as accounting professionals, in Portugal and in other countries, must be aware of the very useful role accountants play in this process.

While allowing to understand whether and how politicians use accounting information, this research contributes to the process of public sector accounting reforms in Portugal, and at an international level, inasmuch as public sector accounting and reporting standards should better address these users’ information needs. Assuming that these reforms would foster more accurate, transparent and useful information for accountability and decision making, it is essential that politicians acknowledge and become real users of accounting information, in order to accomplish those objectives.

This study contributes to the general knowledge of how politicians use accounting information. Academic studies so far have not gathered enough evidence about the type of accounting information that is actually important for politicians. This paper highlights that use of such information by politicians depends on individual skills and their willingness to receive the appropriate advice.