[open-government] European Parliament votes to increase transparency of decision-making

Fri Mar 7 13:23:40 UTC 2014

Access_Info

European Parliament votes to increase transparency of decision-making

/pment voteMadrid/Brussels, Friday 7 March 2014/ - Access Info Europe 
<www.access-info.org> has welcomed the decision 
<http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A7-2014-0035+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=en> 
[1] by the European Parliament to bring greater transparency to its 
decision making by recording and publishing records of final voting in 
committee. Previously most committee votes were taken by a simple show 
of hands and were not recorded.

The decision, adopted on 26 February 2014, applies to all final votes on 
resolutions and legislation. It also makes it compulsory to record and 
publish the final votes by MEPs in plenary on non-binding resolutions.

"/This decision will make it easier for citizens to hold MEPs to 
account, and to for civil society to track the influence of lobbyists at 
the committee stage, which is often where decision making actually takes 
place/" said Pam Bartlett Quintanilla, Campaigner at Access Info Europe.

Access Info Europe notes that this decision is in line with the EU 
Treaties which require the European Parliament to "/meet in public ... 
when considering and voting on a draft legislative act."/ [2]//

Access Info Europe regrets that there other areas of the legislative 
process remain opaque. The European Parliament missed the opportunity to 
extend mandatory transparency to voting on amendments.

Another crucial area of law-making which escapes the reach of 
transparency is that of what are known as "trialogue" negotiations which 
take place between the Parliament, Council of the EU, and the European 
Commission. These are informal meetings held with a view to reaching an 
agreement in the early stages of developing legislation. No record of 
the discussions is made available to the public.

As the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice stated in his 
Opinion of 16 May 2013 in the case of Council of the European Union vs. 
Access Info Europe 
<http://www.access-info.org/en/european-union/501-court-case-ecj-2013>:
/Law-making [is an] activity that in a democratic society can only occur 
through the use of a procedure that is public in nature and, in that 
sense, 'transparent'. Otherwise, it would not be possible to ascribe to 
'law' the virtue of being the expression of the will of those that must 
obey it, which is the very foundation of its legitimacy as an 
indisputable edict./*

For more information, please contact:

****Pam Bartlett Quintanilla *
Access Info Europe
email: pam at access-info.org
tel: +34 913 656 558
www.access-info.org
@pamBQ

*Notes:*
[1] The changes take effect from the start of the March 2014 plenary 
session.
[2] Consolidated version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the 
European Union, Article 15 
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:083:0047:0200:en:PDF. 
Last accessed on 10 January 2014.

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