Tag: public access to documents

EU access to documents laws should be widened to cover all European institutions, bodies and agencies following the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, MEPs said yesterday (17 December), criticising the European Commission for failing to update the rules.

Making all EU legislation available to the public must be a basic principle of the Union, the European Parliament decided yesterday (11 March). But MEPs delayed a legislative vote on the issue to give the EU institutions more time to reach agreement on outstanding issues, like the privacy of individuals.

Details of MEPs' attendance in parliamentary meetings will be published on the European Parliament's website, it emerged yesterday (22 January), marking the first major development since the adoption of new guidelines on access to documents last week.

EU institutions need to ensure access to all documents related to the legislative decision-making process and actively to promote the publicity of proceedings to remedy scepticism towards the EU, argues the Parliament's ALDE Group in a new transparency campaign.

As the European Commission published its Green Paper on the review of access to documents legislation on 2 May 2007, a seminar called for as many organisations and individuals as possible to join the debate, arguing that methods of recourse when access to documents is denied were "insufficient and take far too long".

Public participation in environmental decision-making is to be strengthened after EU Ministers agreed to the principles of the Aarhus Convention. But they stopped short of allowing NGOs the right to drag member states to court.

EU Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx has presented a report that tries to strike a delicate balance between the fundamental rights of access to documents and of data protection. In an exclusive interview with EurActiv, Mr. Hustinx commented on the paper and on other EU data protection issues.