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EU transparency summer reading

The Open Government in the EU Blog is taking a summer break. For the meantime, we have put together a digest of the best blog contributions of the past three months. Happy summer reading!

Whistleblower protection in the European Union requires a shift in mentality

11 MAY 2021. When we focus only on the here and now, we risk overlooking that the transparency question has long historical roots in the European integration project. Historian Joris Gijsenbergh takes us on a tour from Brussels’ earliest whistleblowers to the recent EU Whistleblower Directive.

The EU makes the Transparency Register mandatory but we expected better

23 MAY 2021. After years of bickering, the three European Institutions finally adopted an interinstitutional agreement on a joint mandatory lobby register. Fabio Rotondo of civil society organisation The Good Lobby however had expected more, and explains why.

EU communication – the Elephant in the Room

1 JUNE 2021. Transparency of the EU is more than just laws obliging disclosure: it is about a culture of communication and owning successes and failures. In this contribution, Reneta Shipkova argues that EU communication policy is the real overlooked elephant in the room.

Making it seem better than it is

6 JUNE 2021. It’s the Annual Report season again! Each year, the European institutions are obliged to report on their access to documents activities of the past year. With the reports of the European Parliament and the Council already out, Sofia Sormunen makes the comparison – and finds some interesting discrepancies.

Is there a relationship between Facebook, fake news and support for the EU? It’s complicated.

27 JUNE 2021. All this information and discussion about the EU is good, but there is a lot of damaging false reporting going around, so common wisdom has us believe. But how damaging is fake news really for EU support? Martin Moland and Asimina Michailidou argue that fake news of itself is unlikely to be the decisive factor.

Interview with co-authors of NGO report on RRF spending transparency

4 JULY 2021. The newly established Open Procurement EU Coalition of European NGOs warns that the EU is on track to repeat corruption scandals like those that arose during the pandemic. Coalition members and transparency advocates Rachel Hanna and Helen Darbishire get us up to speed about the looming corruption risks of the EU’s post-Covid billions bonanza.

The New Statute of the European Ombudsman and Transparency

21 JULY 2021. The European Ombudsman recently got given an updated statute. Ombudsman expert Nikos Vogiatzis analysed it and concludes that there is not much new under the sun. Still, the adoption process, and the proposals that did not make it into the final text tell us something about the current state of affairs related to the EU citizens’ watchdog.