Activities of Heidi HAUTALA related to 2017/2209(INI)
Legal basis opinions (0)
Amendments (10)
Amendment 19 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 b (new)
Paragraph 1 b (new)
1 b. Having regard to 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 documents;
Amendment 21 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 c (new)
Paragraph 1 c (new)
1 c. Whereas journalists require direct, immediate and unencumbered access to information by public administration to properly hold authorities to account;
Amendment 23 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 d (new)
Paragraph 1 d (new)
1 d. Whereas information obtained both by right of inquiry as well as through whistle-blowers are complementary to each other and both essential for journalists' ability to fulfil their public interest mission;
Amendment 25 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 e (new)
Paragraph 1 e (new)
1 e. Whereas journalists require fullest legal protection to use and disseminate such information of public interest in their line of work;
Amendment 26 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 f (new)
Paragraph 1 f (new)
1 f. Whereas the right to demand and receive information from public administrations remains scattered and incomplete across the European Union;
Amendment 76 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5 a. Notes with concern that while media freedom and pluralism are a key tenet of democracy, without this freedom the citizens cannot hold the government accountable or make an informed decision about exercising their right to vote; that limitations to media freedom and pluralism will therefore lead to democratic deficit; and that democratic deficit in one Member State will affect the whole of the European Union.
Amendment 86 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5 b. Calls for biennial assessments of potential risks to media pluralism and freedom in the Member States, by an independent committee of experts appointed by the Commission; calls for the European Commission to propose measures to address the findings of these evaluations.
Amendment 91 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 d (new)
Paragraph 5 d (new)
5 d. Notes the attempts by public officials to restrict the dissemination of information by journalists by the abuse of secrecy or intellectual property legislation; Calls on the Commission to propose broader safeguards for journalists to freely access, use and re-use information obtained in their course of work;
Amendment 93 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 e (new)
Paragraph 5 e (new)
5 e. Calls on the Commission and Member States to ensure that journalists are given the proper tools to inquire and receive information from EU and Member State administrations;
Amendment 94 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 f (new)
Paragraph 5 f (new)
5 f. Calls on the Commission to urgently review Regulation 1049/2001 and to propose improvements to the public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents;calls on the Commission to abstain from any more efforts to prevent or deter journalists and members of the public from seeking and obtaining information held by the Commission through arbitrary hurdles; Notes with indignation any attempts to deny access to information by the use of delay tactics, bogus reasons for dismissal or unjustified narrowing of the scope of information that was requested1b; _________________ 1b In several cases, Member States have invoked copyright in order to prevent journalists from disseminating information of public interest (most famously: Unterrichtungen des Parlaments - a series of reports by the German Government to members of Parliament regarding the ongoing military deployments, such as Afghanistan). One of these cases is currently pending at the ECJ after local courts ruled in favour of the government and granted an injunction against a newspaper who published these reports. Regulation 1049/2001 - Access to information to EU documents has not been improved since 2001. On the contrary, the Commission introduced new interpretation in 2014 to the Regulation to introduce bureaucratic hurdles in order to discourage people from seeking documents via Regulation 1049/2001. The Regulation is in dire need of an update to properly account for the possibilities or proactive publication and internet mediated access (which was not taken into account in 2001). On a practical level, the access to information to Commission documents is often thwarted by misapplication of the Regulation and the systematic use of delay tactics. The Commission uses an overly narrow definition of what constitutes information unless the requester specifically asks for all information. Even then important documents such as drafts and comments are often discarded and remain undisclosed. The EMIS committee of inquiry recommended several changes to access to information in the EU, including: "83. Calls on the Commission to improve its capacities to handle document requests from committees of inquiry as well as from journalists and citizens under respective applicable document access rules, in a timely manner and with an acceptable level of quality; urges the Commission to release these documents in their native format and refrain from time-consuming and potentially content-altering format changes and format conversions; further instructs the Commission to make sure that information that is stored in a machine-readable format, e.g. a database, is also released in a machine-readable format".