Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-301"
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"en.20030924.10.3-301"2
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"Mr President, nothing could be more apposite than what is happening this evening. A few rooms away from us, fellow MEPs are sitting reading the reports on what has happened in Eurostat, but they have been gagged. As a sincere Europhile, it pains me every time I come across this culture of secrecy. Why do so many people within the EU institutions continue to believe that it is acceptable to carry on public activities without total and comprehensive public scrutiny? An exhortation to the Commission: do not let the Eurostat scandal sully the good work you have done during the historic years when Europe was being reunited.
I want to thank Mr Cashman for his report and the excellent work he has done in order to open up the EU and its institutions. I should like to make a few brief comments. It is true that a lot has obviously improved, but that is not enough. We are not here to stand around hugging one another. The rules on transparency should apply to all the institutions, including, for example, the ECB and Eurostat. It is worrying that the Council has begun to discover its own methods of classifying documents as strictly secret. Simpler and more comprehensive registers are needed. The Commission should have one register, not several. All documents must be registered, something that does not happen at present.
The number of refusals of requests for documents has increased. That is a completely wrong road to go down and is not in the right spirit. Openness must be the rule rather than the exception. It is important for the culture of openness to be established before enlargement. With this in view, the staff of the EU institutions need to be educated about the regulation and convinced of the advantages of openness.
Finally, the report should have shed more light upon Parliament’s deficiencies. We need to improve in this institution too. Thank you, Mr Cashman, openness is emphatically democracy’s best defence."@en1
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