Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-13-Speech-2-555-000"
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"en.20110913.41.2-555-000"2
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"Mr President, I will even go so far as to cover the Treaty of Lisbon, and indeed its very first article. The article says that the Treaty marks a new stage in the process of forming the Union, ‘in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizens’.
The problem in the debate that we had today on access to documents is, in fact, that the presumption that everything is public unless there are reasons for that not to be the case applies neither in the Council nor in the Commission. On the contrary, their guiding principle is to say that ‘everything is shut tight and, you never know, we might just open it up’. The percentage that the President-in-Office of the Council today cited – namely that 75% of Council documents are ultimately made public – is a nice statistic, but that is the wrong approach to take. It would be a completely new style of politics if we were to work on the presumption that transparency is the starting point.
If, as we are told, the Commission respects the Treaty of Lisbon and also sees scope for improvement, why do we have to wait 15 months for proposals? You say that the definition of documents is not being adjusted, but I was not of the impression that we would be negotiating at this point. I believe, though, that Parliament does have doubts about this.
I would like to give two examples of where, at the end of the day, the Council and/or the Commission do not – in my opinion – respect the Treaty of Lisbon. I refer to Article 218 of the implementing agreement, which states that Parliament must have oversight over negotiations with third parties, over international negotiations. Let us take the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) debate. There is no such oversight in that case. My second example is one that I want to bring to the attention, in particular, of the Polish Presidency. There is in existence a study into the flaws in the European arrest warrant – and Ms Hautala’s working documents make this clear – but the Council refuses to publish the report.
This was a positive exchange of opinions but, above all, I wish Mr Cashman all the best and I would like to offer him our help in improving access to documents in the European Union."@en1
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