Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-12-Speech-1-142"
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"en.20010312.9.1-142"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, it is extremely important that we explain to the people of the European Union and of the applicant countries what the European Union stands for. This is a task which the Commission has been all too lax about. During the hearings of the new Commission in September 1999, Romano Prodi said, and I quote: “…the new Commission will be putting much more effort into communicating properly with the citizens of Europe, giving them open access to information”. I should like to have seen the President of the Commission here this evening. For now, one and a half years later, nothing has happened. Almost a year ago, the Commission promised, in its work programme for 2000, to present a strategy, but nothing has happened. This year again, the Commission has promised to do something about the matter, but rumour now has it that, when it comes to this area, there is, if anything, chaos in the organisation of the Commission.
Allow me just to point out a couple of the practical problems with the EU’s information policy, or lack of information policy. The information is too centralised, it is all prepared in Brussels and it is not directed at target groups according, for example, to gender, age, geographical considerations and the level of education of population groups. There are also some thoroughly topical and practical problems. The large Europa server on the Internet is updated too slowly and erratically, and bureaucrats can remove information from the Europa server as it suits them. There are too many bureaucratic obstacles to accessing information. EU information is now treated as a branch of the EU’s Offices for Official Publications. Is it reasonable that copies of the Official Journal of the EC which are more than three months old should have to be paid for? The Official Journal should be available free of charge on the Europa server. Too much information is only available in the EU’s main languages. Go, for example, into the Rapid database, where you will see, for example, that even Romano Prodi’s speeches are only available in two or three languages. We have eleven official languages in the EU, and all eleven must be used.
The key words where the EU’s information policy is concerned must be decentralisation and coordination, including in exchanges of information between the Commission and Parliament. There must be a determination to make optimum use of the information technology now available. I am very anxious to know how the Commission will get to grips with the task. I assume and hope that, as Mrs Pack also mentioned, the Commission’s offices in the major European cities will be involved and that they will be given tasks and responsibilities, as well as means to address and inform the man or woman in the street. Commissioner, this task has now become a matter of urgency."@en1
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