MEPs want to make it easier for citizens to access EU documents

EU institutions are not transparent enough, MEPs said during a hearing in the Civil Liberties Committee 13 April. “We need more accessibility to EU documents, it’s one of the core essentials of our democracy,” UK Socialist Michael Cashman said.

The hearing looked at how well rules on public access to EP, Council and Commission documents work and found that they need to improve.

The EU overuses the right not to provide access to information in cases involving: the protection of economic policy, legal issues and investigations, according to Anaïs Berthier from ClientEarth, an organisation of activist lawyers.
The Commission systematically uses time extensions and “sometimes they don’t even reply,” she said, noting that a lot of time and money is wasted on going to court to get access to information.

What needs to be done?
The database of EU law is updated daily and around 12,000 documents are added each year.

Participants agreed that all EU institutions should put more resources into making public documents more accessible and said good governance and transparency should also be encouraged in the EU agencies.

“We must change the directive, but we also need a change in attitude,” Finnish Liberal Anneli Jäätteenmäki said.

So just how do you access EU documents?

• Through a written application, asking for access to a document; it should handled within 15 days. Applicants can go to court or complain to the European Ombudsman if they don’t get a reply
• Via the Information Offices in each EU country
• Directly in electronic form – through each institution’s web pages
• The EU Bookshop provides online access to official EU publications
• Through the public register of documents in electronic form
• By reading the Official Journal, where all legal acts are published. At present only the paper version is legally binding

Source: European Comission

This article is also available in: Romanian

This post is also available in: Romanian