Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-16-Speech-4-031"
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"en.20001116.2.4-031"2
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"Mr President, first of all I should like to thank Mr Cashman for the splendid work he has done on this report. I think the report sends a powerful signal to all the EU’s institutions and to the general public. Openness in legislative work and in public administration is, of course, crucial to our democracies being able to function. It is therefore not enough that a system should be formally open. It must also be experienced as such. The Commission’s draft Regulation is in reality reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. There is a difference between words and deeds. Here in the European Parliament, we must adopt the role of the little boy in the story. The usual method of international cooperation, with all the customs and ground rules of diplomacy including the rule that everything must take place behind closed doors, will not do in the modern form of cooperation the EU has developed into.
We must give up this habitual way of thinking. With relatively few exceptions, documents must be fully accessible to the public. Otherwise, we shall lose people’s support for European cooperation. I might also add that, even if the rules in question only affect people in the EU, Mr Cashman’s proposal will also have a knock-on effect in the Member States where it will no longer be possible to keep documents secret on the basis of the standard justification we almost always encounter, namely that it is an EU matter. This is the attitude behind the poor opinion people have of the EU, an opinion which Mr Cashman’s report will change for the better. The report is also good for people’s confidence in European cooperation.
I shall just conclude by saying that I think it was a pity that Mr Jens-Peter Bonde had got the wrong script for his intervention today. It was not, in any case, relevant to the Cashman report."@en1
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