Madrid, 22 March 2017 – Access Info Europe has cautiously welcomed this week’s adoption of the report on ‘Transparency, accountability and integrity in the EU institutions’ by the European Parliament Constitutional Affairs Committee.
The report by Sven Giegold MEP takes important steps to improve record keeping and decision-making transparency by calling for the Council to publish the position of member states in minutes of working group meetings, as well as ensure documents created during trilogues (informal talks on legislation between the three main EU institutions) are made directly available online by the Parliament.
“MEPs must now build upon the steps outlined in this report towards greater transparency in EU decision making that is sorely needed,” stated Andreas Pavlou, RTI Campaigner and Researcher for Access Info Europe.
Amendments to the report however, dropped a provision on proactive publication of MEP meetings with lobbyists that would mirror the Commission’s current lobby transparency policy from November 2014. The report only maintained a voluntary provision for MEPs to keep a legislative footprint.
The adoption of this own-initiative report comes at the same time as the Parliament prepares itself for secret negotiations between the three institutions on the reform of the EU lobby transparency regime. Access Info has previously criticised the lack of transparency and oversight in secret trilogue meetings.
“It is disappointing that MEPs push other EU institutions to be more open, but are unwilling to apply these somewhat-basic transparency standards to themselves to enable their electorate to hold them fully accountable,” added Pavlou.
The own-initiative report will now pass to plenary where it will be voted on by all 751 MEPs.
For more information, please contact:
Luisa Izuzquiza, Communications Officer | Access Info Europe
or
Andreas Pavlou, RTI Campaigner and Researcher | Access Info Europe
Send an e-mail or call +34 913 656 558
Photo: European Parliament via Flick (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)