European Parliament documents finally on-line

[Herman Beun]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Five liberal members of the European Parliament (from NL-D66,
UK-LibDems, BE-VLD, SE-Fp and IT-Ind) opened a new website on which
they
publish European Parliament documents hitherto not available to the
general public. The address is http://www.openupeurope.com/.

New European legislation and EP reports are usually prepared in
parliamentary committees (permanent working groups centred around
themes
like environmental policy, social affairs, or industry and trade)
before
they go to the vote in plenary. It is obviously in this preparatory
stage, when texts haven't been finalized yet, that comments and
additions by civil society (NGOs, ordinary citizens) are most
effectively dealt with.

However, the EP puts these (formally public) documents on internet
only
_after_ the committee meetings have taken place, although the
information is available earlier on the EP's own intranet site. The
result in practice is that large and rich organisations (industry)
have
a considerable advantage over poorer organisations (environmental or
human rights groups) and ordinary citizens when it comes to
influencing
EU decision-making, because they can afford to pay permanent lobbyists
in Brussels who can get those documents anyway by using their network.
The initiative of the liberal MEPs helps closing this unacceptable
information gap.

The MEPs will continue transfering the documents to internet until the
EP's own information service takes over. The website also contains
information about how EU decision-making works and how to organize
your
EU lobbying.


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Herman Beun                  http://www.bigfoot.com/~hermanb/
HermanB at bigfoot.com                       Brussel, Vlaanderen
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European Parliament, ELDR (NL-D66), http://www.vanderlaan.net
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*representative democracy is a contradiction in 4 year terms*
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