Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-03-Speech-1-155"
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"en.20060403.12.1-155"2
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"Mr President, having worked for six years at the Finnish representation and the Finnish Foreign Ministry – in other words, the Council – and three years in the Commission as a civil servant, I do not know if I am a liability or an asset in the discussion – probably a liability, and I address that to Pekka Shemeikka and all of his friends from the Council!
I have several points. My first point is that we are dealing here with two separate but interlinked issues: access to documentation and openness in the Council. If Mr Cashman will excuse me, I am going to focus on the latter. Sometimes I have a feeling that we are a little hypocritical in the debate because, if we look at national parliaments, many committees are never open. We are much more open than national parliaments, so we must bear that in mind.
My second point concerns the opening-up of Council meetings. It is a long story beginning with the Trumpf-Piris report in 1999, then there were several Council conclusions in 2001, the Constitution in 2004, and a Council decision in 2005. It is an ongoing story, but we are not getting it. I personally think it is a fantastic idea to open up the Council meetings. We all know how ministers use the EU as a scapegoat. First, they tap each other on the shoulder in the Council meeting and say: ‘Good compromise’; five minutes after that they go in front of their national media and say: ‘We could not do anything’. We need to open up the Council when it legislates and the sooner we do it the better.
A separate point is that, having sat through hundreds of hours of Council meetings, I can say they are probably the most boring meetings that you can get. Openness would liven up the debate in the Council, because people often come and read prepared documents. It really is boring and if we open it up it would be a bit better.
My next point is about Coreper. Let us be honest: I do not think that Coreper is ever going to open up and I do not necessarily think that is a bad thing.
I would like to finish with an unrealistic proposal, which is rather like Mr Voggenhuber’s proposal. What we should have is the Council meeting in a chamber without assistants next to them and in complete openness. That would be a truly open and transparent Council, and that is what we need."@en1
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