Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-17-Speech-4-051-000"
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"en.20110217.5.4-051-000"2
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"Mr President, at the end of last year, the Commission revised the rules for its expert groups. In the run-up to that revision, I was able to engage in good informal discussions with the Commission’s representatives.
Nonetheless, it is strange that the European Parliament has never been formally involved in this. After all, transparency is a common concern of both the Commission and the European Parliament.
Can the Commissioner assure me that, in the future, we will have a formal dialogue on such questions before final decisions are made?
In the last week, I again contacted all kinds of civil society organisations. Unfortunately, they have not received any reassurances whatsoever that the composition of expert groups will be more balanced in the future. In fact, they have received information about the creation of new expert groups.
I know from my own experience, from the days when I myself was working for the Secretariat-General of the Commission, that Directorates-General are small kingdoms. However, if there is political will, then it must be possible for the Commission to decide to post on a single website all information about the new expert groups and about the accompanying notification procedures. Will the Commissioner ensure this is the case or will he bow to the Commission’s official bureaucracy?
All civil society organisations are facing a huge lack of resources. That applies to the unions, consumer organisations and to representatives of SMEs. They are having to make do with a small office in Brussels, in contrast to large companies which have the resources to hire professional lobbyists. This means that, in the interests of workers, consumers and SMEs, people from outside Brussels, in particular, should be enabled to take a seat on expert groups.
However, this comes with a price tag. The Commission’s website should indicate very clearly that travel and accommodation expenses will be reimbursed and, also, that a reimbursement scheme exists for other costs directly associated with work in expert groups. NGOs are often not aware of this nor do the Commission’s officials bring this to their attention voluntarily. For a self-employed person, for example, it is impossible without reimbursement to just drop their work in order to participate in an expert group in Brussels. Such reimbursement should therefore be mandatory.
Directorate-General for Health and Consumers (DG SANCO) has a policy that experts who are recruited in a personal capacity should not be allowed to have any links to organisations which have a direct interest in the remit of a particular expert group. I call on the Commissioner to make DG SANCO’s policy mandatory for all DGs.
Finally, I would like to hear from the Commissioner how it is possible that the Commission’s website lists Greenpeace as a participant in
while I am in possession of correspondence between Greenpeace and the Commission which suggests that Greenpeace’s application for participation was explicitly rejected by the Commission."@en1
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"Implementing Geological Disposal of Waste - Technology Platform"1
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