EU: Baltic and Slovene ministers unite for better EU wob

BRUSSELS - 5/3/09 - Seven ministers call for the EU to make a commitment to more transparency, when revising the EU-wob. The common articles comes ahead of next weeks vote on the subject in the European Parliament.

The foreign ministers - all from countries with a strong transparency record - are severely worried about the draft new EU wob. "In many areas, the proposed reform seems aimed mainly at changing the current openness-oriented interpretation," they write in a common article in European Voice.

If the European Commission would not be willing to reconsider certain elements in the proposal, "that would constitute a step backward in terms of openness."

The ministers from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Slovenia welcome the fight for more transparency currently going on in the European Parliament.

"We are therefore glad to see that the Parliament's committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs adopted a report on 17 February that shares our vision of a more transparent Union."

 The ministers are concerned for roll-backs in a number of areas.

In negotiations within the Council, we have found ourselves defending the current level of access in many key areas, instead of discussing improvements to it. The risk we are facing is that entire categories of documents will be excluded from the scope of EU access rules. A good example of this is the idea of denying the public access to any documents relating to investigations run by the Commission – one of its core tasks. There are better ways of guaranteeing the smooth conduct of such investigations than by categorically excluding any possibility of public access.
We have also been surprised that the idea of reconstituting member states' absolute veto power over documents originating from them has gained some support not only in the Council, but also in the European Parliament. What would the EU's citizens have to gain from such reforms?