Brussels, 02/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 2 December, the chair of the European Parliament's international trade committee, Bernd Lange (S&D, Germany), expressed delight at the college of commissioners' approval of the agreement between the European Commission and the Parliament, which guarantees MEPs access to all categories of confidential TTIP (transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement) negotiation documents, including consolidated texts.
“Eleven months of negotiations with the Commission have paid off. The result is a big win for the European Parliament - all MEPs will now be able to exercise their duty of democratic scrutiny of the TTIP talks”, Lange stated. “The access conditions we have agreed on will increase the transparency of the TTIP process significantly. What we have achieved today will also set a precedent for the transparency of future trade talks”, he added.
From now on, MEPs will be able to read the consolidated texts in a secure reading room in the European Parliament, take handwritten notes and use the information as a basis for their political actions. However, the Commission-Parliament agreement ensures that the confidential nature of this information is not compromised - in order to protect EU interests and avoid weakening the EU's negotiating position. MEPs' full access will be subject to the security rules governing access to confidential documents.
Under pressure from the European Parliament, from the European public and from the EU Ombudsman, the Commission introduced an initiative at the end of 2014 for the transparency of TTIP talks - which made an unprecedented number of documents available, with most of the documents being regularly published by the Commission. However, only a limited number of MEPs have thus far been able to access confidential TTIP documents due to the sensitivity of the documents for the EU and USA - in other words, the consolidated texts reflecting the draft compromises between both sides. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)