Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-02-Speech-3-109"
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"en.20010502.7.3-109"2
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"Firstly, I offer my congratulations to the rapporteur Michael Cashman, his co-rapporteurs, the whole of the Civil Liberties Committee and the Swedish Presidency, who have been so vital in getting us to where we are today. Let me be clear. This report does not go as far as I would like. For that matter, it does not go as far as some of the pioneers in this area, in some of the NGOs, would like, like Tony Bunyan of Statewatch. It does not go as far as I hoped, but it does go further than I expected, as Parliament and the Swedish Presidency dragged the Commission and Council far closer to our position than they ever expected to be.
To accept what is offered here is to take a window of opportunity that is not guaranteed to remain open indefinitely. We recognise that some documents should and must remain confidential and classified, but what must not happen is that legitimate reasons of security, public safety and public protection are used to hide the merely embarrassing and misjudged. We welcome in particular the annual report that will detail the number of documents not listed from each institution, which will hopefully stop institutional creep from taking place, as year after year they add further and further categories of documents that will remain secret. We welcome the assumption of access and hope it proves just that.
These processes will increase transparency, improve accountability and give citizens rights to access documents. It does not give us freedom of information, but merely freer information. The latter, however, is a goal well worth achieving. The annual reports and the promised follow-up report in January 2004 may well prove that this report, this agreement, is not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning. As my friend Hans-Peter Martin said, it took decades for the Freedom of Information Act to become law. Nevertheless, it is a political pleasure to be here."@en1
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