Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-02-Speech-3-111"
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"en.20010502.7.3-111"2
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"Mr President, Parliament is taking an important step today on the road towards the greater transparency which we have been talking about for so many years. The new rules are a stage in the cultural revolution that is needed if the EU is to develop into a modern, efficient and democratic form of cooperation which citizens in fact have confidence in. What we have here are marked improvements.
As a starting point, all documents, including internal documents, are included, and they must be registered. The exceptions to this rule are few but well-founded, and the rules governing the lodging of complaints have been tightened up on. Many here today have criticised the present compromise, and in the case of a compromise there will always be something to criticise. This must not, however, overshadow the fact that this is a good compromise in which the EU is setting a standard for transparency unknown in many of the EU’s Member States. Transparency does not come about through legislation alone, however. It also depends upon a culture of transparency. Transparency ought not to be perceived as an inconvenience for the administration. Transparency is an advantage, not only for democracy but also for the authorities to which it extends.
Today, I want to call upon the Commission to take the spirit of this proposal seriously, not only the wording of the Regulation but also the recitals. The Commission should forget the lack of public access that characterised its first proposal and straightforwardly adopt the new proposal and the new spirit. The Commission has a big responsibility for ensuring that those who at present maintain that the new rules are no better than the existing rules are proved wrong. In three years’ time, practical experience must constitute a sufficient argument, and this is what we shall spend the next three years acquiring. We must see how the new rules work. We must make sure that countries which are sceptical come to see for themselves that transparency is beneficial to democracy."@en1
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