Brussels, 04/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Commissioner in charge of administrative affairs, audit and the fight against fraud, Siim Kallas, announced on Thursday that he would shortly be presenting a White Paper on transparency within the European Union and that he was also to arrange a conference with interested parties, with a view to presenting concrete proposals on the subject. Working closely with the future British Presidency of the Council, of the second half of 2005, the European Commission hopes to adopt a communication in the autumn, announced actions to be taken at Community level (and possibly legislative proposals) and recommendations to the Member States and businesses in question (such as lobbies).
In a speech in Nottingham, United Kingdom, on Thursday, Mr Kallas stressed that the lack of transparency in the Community institutions is very often the cause of public opinion rejecting European ideas. He feels that this weakness “only serves the cause of populist movements, aiming at the demise of the European Union”. The Commissioner's objective is to keep a closer eye on NGOs and the 15,000 pressure groups (lobbies) in Brussels. There are no rules on registering lobbying activities and there are “few signatures” on the voluntary codes of conduct some of these groups subscribe to, and there have been seriously few sanctions so far, he said. Each year, he said, the Commission spends over 2 billion EUR on developing countries, which is channelled by NGOs. However, various NGOs receive funding from the European Commission, even though their main activity is to lobby the Commission, Mr Kallas noted.
The NGO “Corporate Europe Observatory” (CEO), which lobbies mainly for stricter rules on pressure groups in Brussels, welcomed Mr Kallas's initiative, which it described as “good news for democracy in Europe”.