27 February 2020 – Access Info Europe today welcomed the online publication of the European Commissioners' Mission Expenses from December 2017 to December 2019, which had been previously taken offline by the European Commission. The renewed publication of the data comes after Access Info denounced its non-availability, submitted a formal request for it via that AsktheEU.org platform, and wrote to Commissioner Vera Jourová, in charge of Values and Transparency; no response has yet been received to that letter. “We are pleased to see that minimum standards of transparency have been restored, in line with the 2017 Commission commitment to publish

Madrid, 12 February 2020 – Access Info today joined the organisation The Good Lobby, and nearly 250 signatories in sending an open letter to the President of the European Court of Justice, asking for their hearings to be live streamed so that there is genuine transparency in the Court's proceedings. The letter to the Court President, Konen Lenaerts, draws attention to the need of restore citizens' trust in judicial system "at a time of growing, and worrisome, populistic attacks on the judicial branch across the EU." The signatories denounce the lack of transparency of the Court's hearings, which prevents European

Madrid/Brussels, 5 February 2020 – Access Info Europe today condemned the removal from the European Commission website of all the previous travel expenses data of Commissioners, and has written a letter to Commissioner Vera Jourová, who is charged with Values and Transparency, calling for publication of the historical and current expenses data in an accessible, user-friendly format, in real time. Breaching a 2017 commitment to publish Commissioners' mission expenses data, a commitment that itself came about after a three-year campaign for transparency by the Madrid-based organisation Access Info Europe, the Commission has now archived all the previously published data to

Madrid, 18 December 2019 – Access Info Europe today welcomed the re-election of Ms Emily O’Reilly as European Ombudsman for another 5 years, after a competitive open process in which she won in the third round of voting by the European Parliament, receiving 320 votes out of 600 votes cast. In the run up to the election, Access Info wrote to all MEPS, urging them to support the candidate with the strongest track record in working for transparency and openness of the European institutions, and stressing that Ms O’Reilly had demonstrated her commitment to advancing the right of access to

Brussels, 12 December 2019- Access Info today joined the organisation GONG (Croatia) and 33 other NGOs from across Europe in calling on the incoming Croatian Presidency of the European Union to act to ensure legislative and lobby transparency, and in particular to ensure transparency of the Council of the EU.   The organisations note that at least half of all laws passing through national parliaments are related to norms and directives adopted at the EU level, and yet without transparency of the Council, it is almost impossible for citizens at the national level to engage in debate at the root

Brussels, 28 November 2019 - The incoming president of the European Council, Charles Michel has been called on to commit to full transparency of lobbying, in a letter sent today by Access Info Europe, along with 30 civil society organisations members of the ALTER-EU lobby transparency platform. The letter, coordinated by ALTER-EU (The Alliance for Lobby Transparency and Ethics Regulation) also calls for action on enforcing the rule of law, avoiding corporate capture, and boosting ethics regulation. Particularly important is the call for the President of the Council to publish proactively, in full, a list of all meetings that he