Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-12-15-Speech-2-247"
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"en.20091215.16.2-247"2
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"Mr President, as you know, increased transparency is an extremely important issue for the Swedish Presidency. We have come quite a long way in our EU institutions when it comes to transparency. However, it is not just about laws and regulations. Transparency is about attitudes and about how laws and regulations are applied in practice.
This morning, I had the great pleasure of meeting with Commission Vice-President, Margot Wallström, and Parliament’s Vice-President, Diana Wallis, in the Interinstitutional Committee on Public Access to Documents. The meeting took place on the initiative of the Swedish Presidency. The committee had not met for two years. We had some very positive and specific discussions on how we could improve the opportunities for citizens to access the institutions’ documents in practice. We should have meetings more often, and that was also one of our joint conclusions.
I am pleased that the Treaty of Lisbon places a great deal of importance on transparency, public scrutiny and democracy. We welcome this. As regards the review of Regulation (EC) No 1049, which we refer to as the Transparency Regulation, the Presidency wishes, first and foremost, to focus on the new legal basis for the Regulation. This is contained in Article 15(3) of the Treaty of Lisbon. The most important change in the new legal basis is the extension of the institutional scope. In plain language, this means that, while the previous article only applied to the documents of Parliament, the Council and the Commission, the new article extends the public’s right to access documents to include all of the European Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies. There are certain restrictions with regard to the documents of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank, but it is a significantly larger area than it was previously.
The Commission has announced that it will bring a proposal before Parliament and the Council with a view to adapting the present Transparency Regulation to the new provisions of the treaty.
In the meantime, the Council’s work on the review of the Transparency Regulation will continue to be based on the proposal that the Commission tabled before Parliament in May 2008.
Since May 2008, the Council’s Information Working Group has gone through the proposal twice. The second technical run-through was completed during June and July of this year and includes a number of the amendments that Parliament approved at the plenary sitting in March 2009. In May, Parliament decided not to conclude its formal reading of the Commission’s proposal before the European Parliament. I would like to remind Parliament that my colleague, Beatrice Ask, who is the Swedish Minister for Justice, explained to the Committee on Civil liberties, Justice and Home Affairs on 2 September 2009, at the beginning of the Swedish Presidency, that she was prepared to initiate discussions between the institutions. She asked specifically whether the newly-elected Parliament intended to continue working on the basis of the 92 amendments that had been adopted by Parliament in March 2009. The reason for her question was that, as the Presidency, we need to know Parliament’s position, even it if was not necessarily in the form of a completed first reading.
As I understand it, the new Parliament has not had the opportunity to debate the Commission’s proposal yet, but has focussed instead on the possible effects of the Treaty of Lisbon on the ongoing review.
In the Council, we are awaiting the Commission proposal that has been announced relating to the impact of the Treaty of Lisbon on the Transparency Regulation. We will, of course, continue to be available to discuss the present proposal with you and it goes without saying that, in such discussions, it is only natural that we should take account of the effects of the new treaty.
In my opinion, Article 15(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union is an entirely relevant legal basis for the proposal under the new treaty. Other articles relating to public scrutiny in general, better communication between the institutions and citizens and good administration are of utmost relevance to the institutions’ work in order to reinforce democracy, efficiency and legitimacy. We also need to discuss how this type of objective should be realised. However, I am not convinced that there is space for them within the framework of the Transparency Regulation. For the sake of clarity, the Regulation should contain clear rules relating simply to public access to documents and not a lot else."@en1
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