Brussels, 14/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - By adopting the report by British Conservative Christopher Heaton-Harris (EPP-ED, UK), the European Parliament is calling on the Commission to take all necessary measures to improve the quality of its assessment of services and mark out the sectors which are in need of a critical review such as the freezing of farm lands, international fishing agreements, co-operation with Asia and Latin America and EU support for NGO structures. MEPs are therefore requesting that the Commission take into account these criticisms in the examination of current policies in these areas.
The EP recommends that before the end of 2002, the Commission submits an annual assessment that is "more accessible and concrete that that presented in 2001" and observes with "worry" that investigators in several political areas "have repeated for years the same kind of criticism, namely, the excessive weight of the administrative burden on beneficiaries, the complexity of procedures, the absence of a clear strategy and the lack of coherency in interventions".
In the context of transparency and openness, the EP congratulates the Commission for its Internet site on assessments, which presents "in a well-organised" way key documents, while providing a link with other sites involved in this subject. MEPs do indicate "with consternation" the high number of assessment reports listed in the annual assessment balance sheet for 2001 which are not available. They point out that in keeping with the 20012 regulation on public access to documents, "the refusal to grant access to Commission documents is not possible other than in exceptional cases". According to MEPs, the Commission should provide the reasons on a case-by-case basis why certain reports have not been made public.