Categories
Implementation

MEPs publish open letter to upcoming Council Presidency concerning transparency

Today, 97 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) submitted a letter to Finnish government which will take up the rotating EU Council Presidency as of 1 July, urging it to make lobby transparency a central theme in its policy agenda.

The letter, written by prominent transparency proponents and MEPs charged with transparency policy questions (including Heidi Hautala, Danuta Hübner, and Sylvie Guillaume), was signed by MEPs from various political groupings, including the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats, and the Greens. It calls on Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, to address the opacity of Council decision making, which an accompanying press release describes as “a veritable ‘black box’ which has been lagging far behind the Parliament and Commission on transparency provisions”.

Categories
Civil society Oversight

Coalition of actors criticises Commission’s transparency initiative for falling short

Recent days have seen a wave of criticism against the new Commission’s transparency initiative. 

Categories
News reports

Transparency news reports January-March 2015

EU transparency in the news, January – March 2015.

See also the news report digests for 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016,  2015 (second quarter, and second half), and 2014 (last quarter).

The Open Government in the EU blog keeps a regularly updated overview of news reporting on EU transparency since September 2014. This post contains an overview of reports over the first three months of 2015. News reports are collected through quick scans on Google news and the most relevant websites. While this news scan is in no way exhaustive or fully systematic, it does provide a nice overview of the direction that the transparency debate is taking over a period of months.

During the first quarter-year of 2015, EU transparency news focused predominantly on the (lack of) transparency around the TTIP negotiations and the issue of tax transparency sparked by the LuxLeaks scandal. A further item that continued to be debated in 2015 was the regulation and transparency of lobbying activities. A longlist of news reports is provided below.

Suggestions for additions or current news are warmly welcomed, via the twitter account @MZHillebrandt. –MH

See also: news reporting September – December 2014

Categories
News reports

Transparency news reports September-December 2014

Schermafdruk 2015-01-19 11.45.40

Since after the summer of 2014, the Open Government in the EU blog is keeping a regularly updated overview of news reports related to transparency and access to documents in the context of the EU. News reports are collected through quick scans on Google news and the most relevant websites.

While this news scan is in no way exhaustive or fully systematic, it does provide a nice overview of the direction that the transparency debate is taking over a period of months. The aim is therefore to present to our readers, next to the news roll on the right side of the blog, a three-monthly overview of all reports collected, beginning with the final months of 2014. Suggestions for additions or current news are warmly welcomed, via the twitter account @MZHillebrandt.

See also the news report digests for 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016,  2015 (first quarter, second quarter and second half). –MH