Brussels, 15/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, the European Parliament adopted a critical resolution tabled by 5 groups (EPP-ED, PES, Greens/EFA and UEN) on the Council and Commission's policy over public access to their documents, while accompanying this criticism with some positive points. While stressing that discussions to get that far had been "Byzantine", Parliament begin its resolution by welcoming the fact that the Inter-institutional Committee on Access to Documents should have met for the first time the same week on the fringe of the plenary session. Criticising the "opacity" of the Council and Commission rules relating to access to documents, Parliament recalls "that the three institutions have not yet managed to find common ground on the minimum level of data protection".
The resolution praises the Commission for the adoption of some measures: right for citizens to have access to its proposals in co-decision procedures, adoption of provisions concerning the administration of documents. It criticised it because its internal rules were not always "fully compatible" with the regulation on access to documents, and "regrets that the Commission should persist in maintaining all infringement procedures from the public eye". The European Parliament supports the letter of the British and German Prime Ministers on the re-transmission to the public of legislative debates in Council. It calls for public access to Council documents to be extended to the stances of national delegations in ongoing discussions. The resolution, moreover, marks Parliament's disapproval at the fact that the Council should have decided to "classify as confidential the agendas of the meetings of the EU/United States high-level group and working group, on the grounds that the North American authorities were against their publication". Regarding document registers, that the institutions must put in place before 3 June 2002, Parliament "warns the institutions" that these must be based "on common standards devised to provide easy citizen access". It calls on the Publications Office to speed-up its work of harmonisation in the matter. Parliament also calls for the opening up of historic archives of the institutions to comply with rules on access to documents, and "welcomes" the fact that the Commission should have announced an initiative along those lines.