Strasbourg, 22/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - By adopting last week in Strasbourg, the report by the Dutch Christian Democrat Johanna Maij-Weggen, the European Parliament modified its internal regulation in order to align itself with the new Community regulations on public access to EP, Council and Commission documents. Other than the registration details of the documents and the processing of requests from the public, it now foresees rules guaranteeing confidentiality for so-called "sensitive" documents.
During the debate, the rapporteur for the constitutional committee Hanja Maij-Weggen and the rapporteur for the opinion of the public freedoms committee, the British Labour member Michael Cashman, have underlined that they had worked hand-in-hand, in good co-operation. Several MEPs felt that the regulation in questions was "a step in the right direction", even if it was not ideal. This is the case of the British Labour member Richard Corbett and also the British Conservative Roy Perry, for whom there remains a long way to go; in particular, Mr Perry was indignant that the petitions committee, of which he is a member, still does not have access to documents that could concern it (such as the answer from the British government to a significant number of petitions concerning the insurer Lloyds of London). Others regretted the apparent disinterest of the public towards the Parliament's efforts towards transparency: our transparency must be visible, citizens must want to know what is happening here, said the CDU member Joachim Wurmeling. Moreover, Neil McCormick, Scottish National Party, complained: "the more we open the glass house, the more people want to look into it". The Co-President of the European for Democracies and Diversities group, Jens-Peter Bonde, felt, he too, that the regulation represented progress, while he strongly criticised the framework agreement between the Parliament and the European Commission over access to the latter's documents, agreement which, he felt, creates first and second class MEPs: those that may and those that may not have access to documents…
As for European Commissioner Michel Barnier, he assured that the Commission would loyally apply this framework agreement, and he underlined that the regulation on which the Parliament was called to rule represented very significant progress and an increase in the responsibility of the institutions towards the citizen. The Commission will adopt before the end of November an internal decision on the implementation of the EP and Council regulation, he announced, when noting that it is important that, while fully respecting their autonomy, the institutions follow a similar approach in this matter.