There is a culture of secrecy running through the European Commission
EU to improve transparency
Thursday 1st February 2007
Along with democracy, flexibility and subsidiarity, transparency is one of the four major reforms the EUDemocrats would like to see in tomorrows EU. However increasing citizens requests to access information have brought public access to EU documents in the new challenges of the Commission. A Friend of the Earth (FOE) campaigner said last year that there is a culture of secrecy running through the European Commission, and the public and groups like FOE must fight for every piece of paper to be made public. Access to the Commission library is also quite restricted; our EUD staff has been turned down after several trials. To obtain authorization, one must fill a motivation form and send a mail to the administration of the DG for Education and Culture but, afterwards, there is no guarantee whatsoever to receive an answer. Statistics show that the Council and the Commission turn down one third of the applications for information access, while the parliament refuses around twenty percent. Why is it so difficult to allow access to EU documents? As a result, the EU ombudsman was quoted saying: a quarter of all our complaints every year relate to the lack of transparency.
Facing a lot of criticism, the Commission has decided to improve or at least clarify the situation on transparency. Therefore, the Commission will try defining properly the working papers that may be called a document and thus become accessible from those that must remain secret. In the case of a secret document, it will be decided whether the exception to access should be limited in time. The Commission also mentioned that there is room for improvement concerning its websites.
MEP Jens Peter Bonde, a veteran transparency campaigner and member of the EUDemocrats, has welcomed the Commission move for improved transparency. However, the battle is not over, Bonde says, looking to get the Commission to be more open about the names of the 3000 experts committee that help legislate on EU affairs.
Source: EUobserver