The European access to documents legislation is to change... for the better? [09/05/2008]
The European Commission on April 30 proposed to amend the regulation on access to documents held by the EU institutions. Some NGOs are very critical of the proposal.
This follows a public consultation in 2007, to which the Civil Society Contact Group contributed. Statewatch, an NGO working to defend civil liberties, is critical of the proposal from the European Commission: Statewatch considers that the Commission hasn’t taken into consideration many of the problems raised by civil society and the European Parliament. Statewatch considers the proposal as “highly retrogressiveâ€:
- the definition of document would become more restrictive referring to legislative and recorded documents only
- the definition of rules for all other documents would be left to each EU institution individually
- European Commission press release
