Tag: transparency

The EU should make better use of new technologies to improve its democratic decision making, transparency and participation. This is key in an election year, at a time when the sense of trust among citizens in its institutions is at an all-time low, writes Marietje Schaake.

Plans to allow EU citizens to switch bank accounts more easily, and offering fundamental rights to open an account, represent the opening salvo in a series of proposals this year. Helena Walsh argues that behind the consumer benefits of the banking proposals, thorny practical questions remain unaddressed.

Transparency facilitates scrutiny and hence accountability. Despite recurrent criticism and even active campaigns fuelled by some organisations, EU efforts in the area of transparency are among the most comprehensive in the world, writes European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič.

While the full facts that led former EU Health and Consumer Commissioner John Dalli to resign have not yet been made public, adequate measures in response to what has become the ‘Dalli scandal’ are more necessary and urgent than ever, argues Natacha Cingotti.

More transparency on the pricing and reimbursement of medicines should be the rule for the future to improve patient's access to affordable treatments, MEPs said after backing draft legislation in the environment and public health committee.

A European Parliament panel voted yesterday (18 September) to strengthen financial disclosure rules designed to deter corruption in foreign mining, petroleum and forestry investments, putting the draft EU rules in line with a stringent law adopted this summer in the United States.

A United Nations body has found that the European Union has failed in its commitments towards transparency and public participation in renewable energy policies - a move which has been hailed as a victory by wind farm opposition groups.

Countries around the globe are struggling to rebuild their economies after the financial crisis. But the world’s largest publicly traded companies do not demonstrate enough transparency measures to help prevent another economic meltdown, says a new Transparency International report.

Pirate parties in EU countries are expected to grow, because they address issues of high importance in the modern society that is based on digital information, Christian Engström, Swedish Pirate MEP, told EurActiv Germany in an exclusive interview. 

Keeping track of interest representation in Poland is difficult because regulation there focuses exclusively on professional lobbyists and consultants, bringing to light "only a fraction of actual lobbying activities," Agnieszka Cianciara, an expert on lobbying and senior teaching assistant at the College of Europe, told EurActiv Czech Republic in an interview. 

Jim Murray argues that the European Commission's health and consumers department (DG SANCO) must take the lead in ensuring the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) independence in approving drugs and medicines.

Two environmental groups said on Monday (9 May) they had sued Europe's chemicals watchdog for withholding information about the production of toxic chemicals.

EU member states are reluctant to reveal whether or not they support proposals by the European Commission to overhaul EU transparency law, a media investigation carried out this week reveals, triggering fears that the European Union is becoming less accountable to citizens.  

The European Commission can restrict public access to the documents it files in lawsuits until after cases are decided, the European Court of Justice ruled yesterday (21 September), rejecting a request by a leading journalists' trade union based in Brussels. 

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government in the UK is planning to introduce a register of lobbyists similar to that being discussed by the EU institutions, in an attempt to restore trust in politics following an expenses scandal that hit parliament last year.  

Decision-making under the EU's reformed comitology system represents a 'black box' in EU transparency, prominent consultant Daniel Guégen told EurActiv Czech Republic in an interview, asserting that power in Brussels "is shifting from the political level to the bureaucratic level". 

The European Commission will filter citizens' petitions to make sure that "silly" initiatives like abolishing the EU are blocked, Maroš Šefčovič, a vice-president of the EU executive, told EurActiv in an interview ahead of talks today (6 May) on improving the transparency of EU decision-making. 

The European Union's fifty largest companies continue to hide behind trade groups to do their lobbying despite recent attempts by the European Commission to improve the transparency of EU decision-making, according to a new report to be released today (22 April).  

"The European Commission should reform the way it takes advice on financial matters and it cannot do that without bringing about a deep change in its financial expert groups," Yiorgos Vassalos, a researcher at the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), told EurActiv Germany in an interview.

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.

Participants in the European Commission’s lobby register should declare expenditure on lobbying Council presidencies and permanent representations of EU member states, the EU executive said yesterday (28 October), presenting tighter financial disclosure requirements as part of a wide-ranging review of the scheme. But transparency campaigners criticised the revision for failing to fix "fundamental flaws".

Not enough law firms or think-tanks have signed up to the European Commission’s lobby register, Administration and Anti-Fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas said on Tuesday (8 September).

Lobby transparency is unlikely to be a priority for the Swedish EU Presidency given that the appointment of a new European Commission and ratification of the Lisbon Treaty will have to be dealt with under Stockholm's watch, the executive director of the European Centre for Public Affairs, Tom Spencer, told EurActiv.

"Are European Union institutions, as they claim, really listening to citizens thanks to more 'deliberative' consultation tools?" asks Stephen Boucher, programme director at the European Climate Foundation, in a June working paper for the European Policy Institutes Network (EPIN).