3 Amendments of Emmanuel MAUREL related to 2015/2041(INI)
Amendment 24 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Welcomes the fact that the Committee on International Trade (INTA) and the Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade have been collaborating pro-actively to enhance cooperation, establish best practices and improve communication channels, and that this collaboration has been especially useful for monitoring trade negotiations through INTA Standing Rapporteurs and targeted monitoring groups; welcomes recent efforts by the Commission to increase the transparency of trade negotiations; believes, nevertheless, that the Council and the Commission can's efforts remain insufficient and that both should still improve their working methods to better cooperate with Parliament as regards access to documents, information and decision-making for all issues and negotiations related to CCP (such as information relating to negotiations – including scoping, mandates and evolution of negotiations – provisional application of trade agreements, activities and decisions taken by bodies created by trade and/or investment agreements, expert meetings, and delegated and implementing acts); regrets, in this regard, that the Council has not made available to the Members of the European Parliament the negotiating mandates for all agreements currently in negotiation; notes with regret that after one year of negotiations between the Commission and Parliament on access to documents related to the TTIP negotiations, there is still no agreement about access to confidential documents;
Amendment 34 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Stresses that, as pointed out by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), imperatives for transparency derive from the democratic nature of governance within the EU, and that, where confidential information is beyond the reach of public access, as in the case of trade negotiations, it must be available to parliamentarians who scrutinise trade policy on behalf of citizens; considers therefore that access to classified information is essential for scrutiny by Parliament, which in return should abide by its obligation to manage such information properly; considers that there should be clear criteria for labelling documents as ‘classified’; notes that the case law of the ECJ makes it clear that where a document originating in an EU institution is covered by an exception with regard to the right to access, the institution must clearly explain why access to this document could specifically and effectively undermine the interest protected by the exception, and that the risk must be reasonably foreseeable and not purely hypothetical; calls on the Commission to implement the recommendations of the European Ombudsman of July 2015 with particular regard to access to documents for all negotiations, and calls on the Commission to convince EU negotiating partners to increase transparency at their end, so as the bilateral and plurilateral negotiations the EU is involved in could be led with a greater level of transparency and, if possible, with no less transparency than the negotiations organised in the WTO framework;
Amendment 43 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Recalls the importance for the CCP legislative process to count on Union statistics consistent with Article 338(2) TFEU and on impact assessments conforming to the highest standards of impartiality and reliability; considers that sector-by-sector impact assessments would provide EU trade agreements with a higher level of reliability and legitimacy; calls for further reflection on further promoting a mandatory legislative (and lobbying) footprint throughout the legislative process, which would further legitimise it by making it more fact based and transparent for citizens and stakeholders;