Activities of Daniel FREUND related to 2022/2015(INI)
Plenary speeches (1)
Public access to documents – annual report for the years 2019-2021 (debate)
Shadow opinions (1)
OPINION on public access to documents - annual report for the years 2019-2021
Amendments (12)
Amendment 1 #
Draft opinion
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
A a. whereas transparency and integrity crucially contribute to the fight against corruption and maladministration; whereas Parliament called for an ambitious ethics body in its resolution of 16 September 2021;
Amendment 5 #
Draft opinion
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas the purpose of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents1 is to confer on the public the widest possible right of access to the documents of the institutions; whereas, in light of this right and recent case law, any exceptions have to be individually assessed, interpreted and applied strictly and the institutions have the obligation to demonstrate how disclosure would specifically and actually undermine the interests protected by the exceptions; _________________ 1 OJ L 145, 31.5.2001, p. 43.
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
B a. whereas in 2021 the most often occurring reason for the refusal of access to documents by Council was the protection of the Council’s decision- making process amounting to 223 cases; whereas of 1327 legislative documents issued as LIMITE, 839 were eventually made public on request, indicating that LIMITE is used excessively and not reviewed sufficiently by Council itself with a view of making them public and increasing transparency;
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Insists that the EU institutions have the obligation to implement Article 15(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in line with democratic principles, in particular those laid down in Article 10(3) of the Treaty on European Union; emphasises that transparency is fundamental to enable accountability and democratic scrutiny of the EU institutions;
Amendment 14 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. ERegrets that the EU institutions still fail to fully comply with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 and that this regulation is still not updated in line with the new provisions on transparency of the Treaty of Lisbon; emphasises that any update to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 should faithfully integrate the principles established by the case law, ensure that its scope is extended to all EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies as provided for in the Treaty of Lisbon, and adapt the regulation to technological developments, without constituting a step back compared to the current legislative framework the ultimate aim of improving and expanding access to EU documents;
Amendment 20 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Invites theCalls for all EU institutions to ensure the systematic provision of dataall documents in an open, machine- readable format, which is especially essential for numerical or financial data; asks all EU institutions to also make data available in an open, machine-readable format that has not been published in such format in the past; invites all EU institutions to consider to increase the number and to enlarge the categories of documents they directly make available in their public registers;
Amendment 25 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Invites Parliament’s own relevant bodies to ensure that documents are easily accessible to the public; calls, in particular, for amending Rule 122(3) of the Rules of Procedure to ensure the provision of data in an open, machine- readable format;
Amendment 29 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4 a. Calls for a user-friendly system on the European Parliament's website whereby for each roll-call vote, the text voted on and the voting results can be filtered by group and by MEP; further calls for the roll-call vote results, the MEP presence data and the text put to the vote, to be made available in machine- readable formats;
Amendment 33 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Insists that the Council should improve its rules and procedures on legislative transparency, including the accessibility and classification of legislative documents; calls on the Council to follow the Ombudsman recommendation by substantially reducing the number of legislative documents issued as ‘LIMITE’ and to reconsider such limitation regularly;
Amendment 36 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7 a. Highlights the importance of the recent judgement of the CJEU in Case T- 163/21 on access to legislative documents of Council’s working groups concluding that access to legislative documents must be as wide as possible and that exceptions could apply only if access to such documents would specifically, effectively and in a non-hypothetical manner seriously undermine the possibility of reaching an agreement on the legislative proposal in question;
Amendment 40 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 b (new)
Paragraph 7 b (new)
7 b. Insists that all EU institutions, participating in trilogues, follow Article 12 of Regulation (EC) 1049/2001 making legislative documents, that is to say, documents drawn up or received in the course of procedures for the adoption of acts which are legally binding in or for the Member States, directly accessible; interprets that the categories of documents which are to be directly accessible through Parliament's public register website shall include preparatory legislative documents as recognised by the CJEU’s jurisprudence, no matter if authored by the Parliament alone or together with the other institutions, such as political and technical trilogue documents, including but not limited to all versions of the joint multi-column document referred to in the Code of Conduct for negotiating in the context of the ordinary legislative procedure;
Amendment 44 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8 a (new)
Paragraph 8 a (new)
8 a. Welcomes the Ombudsman’s Decision on the Commission's refusal of public access to text messages exchanged between the Commission President and the CEO of a pharmaceutical company on the purchase of a COVID 19 vaccine finding maladministration by the Commission; recalls that text messages are considered documents by Regulation 1049/2001 regardless of the registration criteria used by the Commission or any other EU institution, body, office or agency; calls on the Commission to follow the Ombudsman’s recommendations;