Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-02-Speech-3-096"

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"Public access to documents is, of course, the very stuff of democracy. Control, public scrutiny and democracy are different sides of the same issue and, against that background, I essentially agree with the criticism forwarded to all my fellow MEPs from five distinctive organisations. The conclusion is that this proposal is really worse than nothing. Many aspects of the rules concerning sensitive documents are absurd, and administering these exceptions is a bit like selling elastic by the metre, as a Danish humorist once put it. It in any case requires a firm character and a significantly more democratic turn of mind and basic attitude than that which the Commission and the other institutions of the EU are used to exhibiting. Article 5 undoubtedly involves a deterioration in the current rules governing public access to, and scrutiny of, public documents as practised, for example, in the Scandinavian countries. Moreover, there is another thing which really surprises me, in addition to my fellow MEPs failure to understand the reality of the situation and to the praise forthcoming from the large political groups. It is a source of surprise that not one person has raised the question of whether what has taken place is in accordance with the Treaty. These negotiations have taken place in the strictest confidence, with all the small groups excluded. The negotiations have been conducted by my fellow MEPs, Mr Cashman and Mrs Maij-Weggen, and by the brilliant chairman of the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, Mr Watson, from the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party. The major groups have gone through this process without the rest of us being involved at all in these negotiations. All we can do is vote for or against. This, I would point out, contravenes the basic rules of the Treaty which presuppose that there are three independent institutions which play their part. There are also rules relating to the conciliation procedure and so on, which ensure that the small groups are heard. What we are concerned with here, moreover, is a matter concerning public access to documents. It is quite simply a farce in terms of democracy."@en1

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