Commissioners set to publish minutes in transparency drive

Date: 21/02/02

By Martin Banks

The European Commission is to publish minutes of its weekly meetings on its website in a move designed to boost transparency. The process is due to start in the next few weeks.

In the past, details of the meetings of the 20 Commissioners have only been available to the public on written request. In future, they will be posted on the institution's website: www.europa.eu.int.

The EU executive also hopes to make available a public register of all key Union documents in the near future.

MEP Jens-Peter Bonde, who has campaigned for more openness in EU institutions, called the development 'significant'. But the Danish deputy said the initiative does not go far enough and the public still lacks access to an 'enormous' amount of documents.

'I have been campaigning for this since I was elected 22 years ago,' Bonde said. 'This is a significant step forward because it means that ordinary people will be able to see exactly what is going on in these meetings free of charge.

'In the past, the information has been available only by writing into the Commission or by paying a small fortune to a lobbyist to get the minutes for you.'

He added: 'This is good news but we still lack an enormous amount of documents because the Commission does not yet keep a central record of their documents.'

A Commission spokesman told European Voice: 'We hope this further improves transparency.'

The European Commission is to publish minutes of its weekly meetings on its website in a move designed to boost transparency.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/comm/index_en.htm

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