Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-13-Speech-2-226"
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"en.20010313.15.2-226"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by congratulating Mrs Korhola and the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy for the improvements they have proposed to the text presented to us. And I would also like to congratulate them on having accepted the majority of contributions that we approved in the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, whose draftsperson was Baroness Ludford.
Parliament has, quite rightly, been in the vanguard of the movement to create greater openness and transparency in the activities of public authorities, including access to documents. Access to environmental information should be regarded as one of the essential pillars of an effective environmental policy, because it helps to make the public more aware of environmental issues, thus improving environmental protection and the quality of the environment. It does this by facilitating more effective checks on whether Community environmental legislation is being fully and properly implemented, and, lastly, because it allows the public to play a greater part in environmental decision-making likely to affect their own lives.
This proposal for a directive is intended to replace the 1990 directive. In doing so, the most important objective is to adapt the directive to developments in information technology, thus creating a second-generation directive that reflects changes in the way information is now generated in our society.
By way of conclusion, I would like to emphasise two aspects: the first is the issue of the deadlines within which public authorities are obliged to provide information requested. This has to be done as quickly as possible and at the latest within one month. The second issue is the fact that we have limited the scope for exceptions. Whilst it may be acceptable, in order to protect legitimate interests, for there to be arrangements exempting certain information from the disclosure requirements, it is nevertheless fundamentally important for these exceptions to be rigorously defined and strictly interpreted so as not to undermine the general principle of access so that the directive can indeed fulfil its objective."@en1
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