Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-03-Speech-1-147"
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"en.20060403.12.1-147"2
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"I thank Commissioner for being a committed supporter, together with the European Parliament, of making Council meetings public. I can only repeat what was said by those who spoke before me, because everybody talked about the same issue: parliamentary legislation is a fundamental principle of modern democracy, invested with legislative and executive powers. Although there are certain parliamentary chambers in Member States of the European Union – such as the British House of Lords – which are not elected directly by citizens, at Member State level these chambers, too, make their decisions publicly.
Unfortunately, the Council is an exception to this fundamental principle. Within the democratic system of the European Union, this is the only legislative body in the world that legislates behind closed doors. The exclusion of the public and the secrecy do not increase at all the credibility of the European Union. When a particularly important, controversial issue is being discussed, the debate between Member States would be more transparent and more understandable to everybody if the Council conducted the legislative debate in public, during one of the earlier stages of the process. Therefore, I particularly welcome the excellent report of Mr David Hammerstein, the proposals of Mr Michael Cashman and the report of the European Ombudsman in this matter, and I would like to thank them for their work. I would like to remind everybody of the fact that in accordance with the first article of the Treaty on European Union, decisions must be taken as publicly as possible, bringing the European Union even closer to the citizens."@en1
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