Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-08-Speech-3-146"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20081008.20.3-146"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, our fellow Member in the previous parliamentary term, Maurizio Turco, now an Italian Radical MP, submitted an application – an application that any ordinary citizen can make – requesting access to Council documents in which the names of national delegations that had adopted certain positions during the debate were censored. The Council refused to grant the request and access to a legal opinion was also denied.
The appeal before the Court of First Instance, which in the meantime had forced the Council to make available the identity of the national delegations, found against Mr Turco and for the Council, in order to prevent a ruling from the Court of Justice on the matter. However, an appeal brought before the Court of Justice overturned the original judgment.
The Court simply said that access to documents, particularly those with legislative implications, had to be compulsory because access to documents was democratic and that any exception was to be limited, since this clearly was in the public interest. Public and legal debate on documents increases the legitimacy of the institutions and bolsters public confidence in them.
The question that we are asking today, in brief, is this: how does the Commission and how do the European institutions intend to follow up this judgment? In other words, will they use it as an opportunity for a thorough review of the procedures allowing immediate access to documents?
I know that we are talking about an ordinary citizen, that this is an application that any citizen could have made, and not a reform following an institutional debate. However, I believe that this is precisely where the strength of Mr Turco’s initiative lies, since it shows how an individual case can do much more than institutional initiatives allow.
We must have every possibility of publishing these documents. People need to know, for example, that today, during the European Commission press conference, it was confirmed that the Commission has still not requested information from the Italian Government on a matter that Maurizio Turco himself raised, namely discrimination in religious education in Italy.
How can this information not have been requested? It is a concrete example of mechanisms where the functioning of the European institutions becomes inscrutable for citizens. Therefore, this should be used as an opportunity for a radical overhaul of document access and publication procedures."@en1
|
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples