26 Amendments of Sven GIEGOLD related to 2018/2096(INI)
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas the European Parliament works with a high degree of transparency at all stages of the legislative procedure, including the committee stage, making it possible for citizens, the media and stakeholders to clearly identify different positions within Parliament and the origin of specific proposals, as well as to follow the processes leading to compromises and the adoption of final decisions;
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Shares the view of the Ombudsman that ensuring that citizens are able to follow the progress of legislation is a legal requirement under the Treaties and a basic democratic requirement;
Amendment 31 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Emphasises that transparency at all stages of the legislative process is essential to enable citizens, media, and stakeholders to hold their elected representatives and governments accountable, to guarantee citizens participation right, as enshrined in Article 10 (3) TEU, and to ensure the fundamental right to freedom of information, as enshrined in Article 11 of the Charter;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Believes that a high degree of transparency acts as a safeguard against the emergencespread of speculation, fake news and conspiracy theories;
Amendment 40 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Recalls that the European Parliament represents the interests of European citizens in a fullyn open and transparent manner, and welcomes the substantial progress made by the Commission in improving its transparency standards, inter alia in the conduct of international negotiations and its interactions with interest representatives; noteregrets that the Council does not yet follow comparable transparency standards;
Amendment 44 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Points out that the work of the preparatory bodies of the Council, i.e. the Committees of Permanent Representatives (Coreper I + II) and, more than 150 working groups, informal bodies like the Financial Services Committee, the Eurozone Working-group or preparatory bodies like the Economic and Financial Committee, is an integral part of the Council’s decision-making procedure and play a key role in the legislative process;
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Notes that the Council does not proactively publish most documents related to legislative files, and that available information is presented in a register which is incomplete and not user-friendly; welcomes in this regard the progress made by the Commission, Parliament and the Council in the creation of a joint database for legislative files; calls on all the European Institutions involved in the creation of this joint database to publish a detailed template;
Amendment 59 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Considers the Council’s practice of systematically classifying documents distributed in its preparatory bodies relating to legislative files as ‘LIMITE’ to be a violation of CJEU case law1 and of the legal requirement that there should be the widest possible public access to legislative documents; Reminds that the “LIMITE” marking has no legal basis and is not part of the possible classification under regulation 1049/2001 nor under the Council Decision of 23 September 2013 on the security rules for protecting EU classified information, while its use by the Council has a detrimental effect on the right of public access to documents; __________________ 1. For the principle of the widest possible public access, see: Joint Cases C-39/05 P and C-52/05 P Sweden and Turco v. Council [2008] ECLI:EU:C:2008:374, para 34; Case C-280/11 P Council v. Access Info Europe [2013] ECLI:EU:C:2013:671, para 27; and Case T-540/15 De Capitani v. Parliament [2018] ECLI:EU:T:2018:167, para 80
Amendment 62 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Deplores the fact that following the judgement of the Court of Justice in Access Info in 2013, COREPER decided that as a rule, the drafter of the document should record Member States´ names in documents relating to on-going legislative procedures “where appropriate”; Deems it unacceptable that the positions taken in the preparatory bodies of the Council by individual Member States are neither published nor systematically recorded, making it impossible for citizens, media and stakeholders to effectively scrutinise the behaviour of their elected governments;
Amendment 68 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Points out that this lack of information also hampers the ability of national parliaments to control the actions of national governments in the Council, and enables members of national governments to distance themselves in the national sphere from decisions made at the European level which they shaped and took themselves; considers it irresponsible on the part of members of national governments to undermine trust in the European Union by ‘blaming Brussels’ for decisions they themselves were involved in; demands an immediate end to this practice and a systematic public debriefing during legislative negotiations;
Amendment 70 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11a. Considers that a closer cooperation between national parliaments and the European Parliament can help to close gaps in accountability of national ministers and heads of state and government for their legislative activities in the Council;
Amendment 71 #
11b. Commits itself to propose, in line with Article 9 of Protocol No. 1 of the Treaty on the role of national parliaments of the EU and Rule 142 of its Rules of Procedure, to national parliaments to exchange any documents one parliament might have access to that are of interest for other parliaments as well, if necessary with precautions regarding the classification status of such documents; propose to provide for necessary infrastructure for such exchange if enough national parliaments reply positively to the European Parliament’s invitation;
Amendment 72 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 c (new)
Paragraph 11 c (new)
11c. Calls on the Commission to grant access to the Parliament to the so-called “flash reports” produced by Commission representatives attending meetings of the Council;
Amendment 75 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Considers it incompatible with democratic principles that, in interinstitutional negotiations between the co-legislators, the lack of transparency in the Council leads to an imbalance with regard to available information and thus to a structural advantage of the Council over the European Parliament; reiterates its call for the improvement of the exchange of documents and information between Parliament and the Council and for access to be granted to representatives of Parliament as observers to meetings of the Council and its bodies, in particular in the case of legislation in a way equivalent to which the Parliament grants access to the Council to its meetings;
Amendment 79 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Demands that the Council, as one of the two components of the European legislature, aligns its working methods with the standards of a parliamentary democracy and participatory democracy as required under the Treaty, rather than acting like a diplomatic forum;
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 – point b
Paragraph 16 – point b
(b) to develop clear and publicly available criteria for how it designates documents as ‘LIMITE’, in line with EU lawreform its internal guidelines on ‘LIMITE’ documents, which have no solid legal basis and which are incompatible with the transparency required under the TEU so that they respect the principle according to which LIMITE status can only be given to a preliminary draft that does not have an author yet and that does not produce any effect in the legislative procedure;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16a. Deplores the Council’s practice of encoding some documents as “WK” (working document), DS (document de séance) and MD (meeting document) even during legislative procedures, and using this system not to register those documents; reminds that, according to Articles 11 and 12 of Regulation 1049/2001 the registration of a document is mandatory;
Amendment 92 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 b (new)
Paragraph 16 b (new)
16b. Considers that references to professional secrecy cannot be used to systematically retain documents from being registered and disclosed;
Amendment 93 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 c (new)
Paragraph 16 c (new)
16c. Highlights that since the 2007 Joint Declaration on practical arrangements for the codecision procedure, the General Court and the CJEU have adopted several judgments classifying the right of access to documents as described by Article 42 of the Charter, article 15 TFEU and Regulation 1049/01 as an expression of participative democracy in the EU;
Amendment 94 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 d (new)
Paragraph 16 d (new)
16d. Reminds that according to the CJEU (case C-57/16P) the Commission’s impact assessments should be considered legislative documents and should be directly accessible and considers that the same principle applies to impact assessments prepared by the co-legislator during the legislative procedure;
Amendment 95 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 e (new)
Paragraph 16 e (new)
16e. Reminds that according to the CJEU (T-540/15), trilogue tables form part of the legislative process and shall therefore be directly accessible to the public, unless there is a reasonably foreseeable – and not purely hypothetical – likelihood of the protected interest being undermined and highlights that under Regulation 1049/2001 the decision- making process must risk be seriously undermined (Case T-211/00); Reminds that this also applies to documents containing opinions for internal use as part of deliberations and preliminary consultations;
Amendment 96 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 f (new)
Paragraph 16 f (new)
16f. Considers that the Parliament, regardless of the positions taken by the other Institutions, shall apply the provisions of Article 12 of Regulation 1049/2001 to all trilogues documents;
Amendment 97 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 g (new)
Paragraph 16 g (new)
16g. Is of the opinion that the practice of first reading agreements, that has become the common practice to adopt European legislation, should be better legally framed in order to make it comply with transparency and accountability requirements;
Amendment 98 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 h (new)
Paragraph 16 h (new)
16h. Suggests, for this purpose, to review the current joint declaration on practical arrangements for the codecision procedure, which was agreed before the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, and the Better Law Making inter-institutional agreement with a view to formalising the first reading agreements;
Amendment 99 #
16i. Is of the opinion that such a revision should ensure that first reading agreements comply with some minimum requirements such as: – The definition of a common public inter-institutional calendar – A general rule according to which negotiations should only start after the adoption of mandates for negotiations, accessible to the public both in the Parliament and in the Council; – The proactive publication of the relevant documents on the register of the Parliament and of the Council not later than 10 days after the Trilogue meeting ; This documents should include agendas, participant lists, negotiating positions and proposals for compromises before the meetings, detailed minutes of meetings or updated four column documents after the meetings;
Amendment 100 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 j (new)
Paragraph 16 j (new)
16j. Takes note of some national laws obliging government to send documents, including internal documents on legislative considerations internally, to national archives after a number of years where they are made accessible to the public; takes note that some Member States had to discount on rules regarding the public access to documents to adapt to internal rules of Council; calls on Member States to implement these laws in the best interest of citizens’ access to documents; reminds of its own rules to send all Parliament documents to the EU archive after the end of the next term; calls on Council to adopt a similar rule to publish Council documents after two Commission terms; calls on Council to compare national rules and to align national disclosure rules according to the best practise in the interest of citizens’ access to documents;