The European Parliament initiates a series of steps to secure the transparency and democratic control over the activity of the EU institutions. On April, 6 2006 two reports were adopted, urging the Council to secure public participation in working out new legislative acts and demanding of the Committee to revise the current rules and allow the public real access to the documents of Europarliament, the Council and the Committee.
Translucency and democratic control over EU bodies create salient basis for public credit to the Union itself. Proceeding from such an understanding of the Union, on April, 6th the deputies introduced a proposal into the European Parliament, providing for the revision of the existent European legislation in order to secure the right of the public to participate in the EU Council debates and the preparation of new documents.
European legislation for public access to the texts and documents of EU institutions arose as a result of long-lasting talks between the Parliament and the Council in 2001. At that time some peculiar issues of the sphere in need of reforming were not regulated.
Firstly, the legislation to be revised is to grant access to all the documents linked to the legislative procedure and to all the transcripts of EU Council debates considering working out new legislative acts. Secondly, the current legislation is to be reformed in order to outline the way in which the documents are classified as confidential. Deputies deem that the documents should not be dubbed secret just because of some officials’ desire.
Besides, norms are proposed, touching upon the particular actions of the Council in the sphere, including the broadcasting of public hearings by various media, even via Internet, as well as publishing legislative acts in all the official languages of the EU.
The reform of the European legislation implemented by Europarliament is to become one of the levers available to the population of the EU countries designed to control the activity of EU institutions in the sphere of legislation, which is inalienable from democratic rule.
