Renewed Threat on Access to EU Documents – EU Transparency Campaign

Helle_and_Herman10 April 2012 – After a series of inter-governmental negotiations, fears that Member States are using the reform of the EU access to documents regulation as an opportunity to add new exceptions and to weaken the right of access to EU document have recently been renewed by a Council document, dated 30 March 2012, which outlines the “state of play” of the reform process.

The paper mentions the very real possibility that new, blanket exceptions for documents “requiring special protection” would be introduced into the Regulation. This would affect access to documents related to selection procedures, competition cases, court proceedings, and infringement proceeding for the perverse reason that their sensitivity “stems from their crucial role in core EU activities”.

Today, an open letter was sent to the Danish Presidency and Member State representatives highlighting the main issues of concern. It was signed by 8 civil society organisations at the time of sending, and is still open for sign on from other organisations. Please email pam@access-info.org to sign this letter.

Campaigning on the national level

Given that the inter-governmental negotiations are held behind closed doors, and that many Member States have yet to make their positions on the future of EU transparency public, there is also work to be done on the national level.

In Spain, Access Info Europe today sent a letter to the Spanish government urging them to take a clear pro-transparency stance in the negotiations in the Council, and asking them to make public their position on the various reforms that have been proposed in the WPI (see the Danish non-paper dated 30 March for more information). You can download the letter (in Spanish and English) here.

Please write to your government about the reform of regulation 1049/2001 and let us know that you have done so. You can use our letter as a template. Remember that the 20 demands can be found in English, French, Spanish and Polish.

Thanks again for all your support!

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