Open Government in the EU

Last Monday, Erna Scholtes defended a thesis on the emerging understanding of the idea of transparency over the past decades.

Scholte works as senior consultant at Dutch public consultancy firm Twynstra & Gudde. Over the past years she worked on her research project as an  external researcher at Tilburg University. For this research, she analysed over 5000 parliamentary documents from the period between 1995 and 2010, to see how debates about transparency among Dutch MP . has evolved over the years. Her reseach reveals the multi-faceted understanding that politicians have of transparency, and the inherently positive semantic load that the term carries.

Click here to read a press release about the PhD thesis (in Dutch, entitled: “Transparentie, icoon van een dolende overheid”).

-MH

Dr. Albert Meijer of the Open Government in the EU research team has edited the latest edition of the International Review of Administrative Sciences which goes by the title: “Government transparency: creating clarity in a confusing conceptual debate”.

The IRAS special issue is the fruit of a symposium on government transparency that was held at the Utrecht School of Governance in November 2010. It contains various articles by leading transparency researchers such as David Heald (Aberdeen, Scotland), Alasdair Roberts (Suffolk, USA), and Eric Welch (Chicago), but also holds contributions from an active community of transparency researchers at the Utrecht School of Governance.

The special issue approaches transparency research from various angles such as through a conceptual meta-analysis (Meijer, Curtin, Hillebrandt), experimental results (Grimmelikhuijsen), participative government (Welch), public expenditure (Heald), and parliamentary oversight (Brandsma). It can be viewed here, or through your institution’s online library.

The ongoing financial crisis in the Eurozone may not only have the effect of furthering integration, embodied in a Commissioner for national budgets. Dutch news website Nu.nl reports that the Dutch General Accounting Office has called for more openness about expenditure of European funds.

According to the body which controls government expenditure, expenditure in the EU has been falling short of accountability standards for years. Although 90% of European funds (particularly CAP money) are spent by the member states, transparency about the process is required. At the moment however, only four EU members provide such transparency: Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Read more on the Accounting Office’s special website on EU accountability (in Dutch).

The Danish presidency which took over on 1 January, will attempt to make further progress with the embattled transparency dossier.

The Jack of transparency has been out of the box in the EU ever since the Commission presented a proposal to revise the current law on access to documents, in 2008.

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What did the first years of Council transparency look like?

In this short video clip (in French), former Council spokesman Norbert Schwaiger elaborates on a number of factors that, according to him, contributed to furthering transparency in the Council context.

That the transparency of relations between member states and EU Institutions can sometimes have unexpected and extreme consequences is proven by a current transparency row in Hungary.

Journalist Attila Mong recently published a letter from EU Commission President Barrosso to Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán of 19 December 2011 on his blog, and now faces prosecution. The Hungarian government interprets the publication of this leaked document a violation of the PM’s right of privacy of communication. Prosecution could lead to several years’ imprisonment.

Although the leaking of the document concerns an alleged offense under Hungarian law, several international advocacy organisations, among them Access Info Europe, the n-ost Network for Reporting on Eastern Europe and the South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) have expressed their concern. They have pointed out that the pending case creates an atmosphere of fear and that the Hungarian government’s position is not tenable under European law. -MH

This morning, Utrecht School of Government researcher Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen was awarded a doctorate for his dissertation on transparency and trust.

In his dissertation, Grimmelikhuijsen delved into the complexities of a widely held expectation of transparency: that citizens will trust their government more if they have more information about it. In order to study this question, Grimmelikhuijsen chose for the methodological interesting angle of an experimental setting, working with self-designed transparency websites as templates. The research was co-supervised by Open Government in the EU team member dr. Albert Meijer, while prof. Deirdre Curtin of our team was on the reading committee. The Ministry of Home Affairs has already shown interest in the dissertation and will be discussing its implications for policy during its next ministerial meeting. Grimmelikhuijsen will continue to investigate the impact of government transparency in a post-doctoral programme at the USG.

A press statement about the dissertation can be found here.

In February 2011, the Irish Society for European Law (ISEL) and Transparency International Ireland organised a workshop on the state of Access to Documents in the EU. Lectures were given by Bart Driessen (Legal service of the Council), Marc Maes (Deputy head of transparency unit, Commission), Nikiforos Diamandouros (European Ombudsman) and Ronny Patz (University of Potsdam, blogger). These lectures are available in ten YouTube clips.

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Yesterday, the European Parliament formally passed its first reading in the revision procedure on Regulation 1049/2001.

Regulation 1049/2001 has been in place for over ten years now, and has regulated the public’s access to community documents. When adopted, it significantly improved citizens’ access to the EU, making the institutions more transparent. Since then, it has functioned grosso modo to the satisfaction of both citizens and the institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

Reporters evaluate regulations in 105 countries and EU

(reported adopted from FOIANet, MH)

NEW YORK – The Associated Press this week will unveil the findings of the first worldwide test of freedom of information laws.
AP’s report, scheduled for release on Thursday, Nov. 17, follows months of investigation across 105 countries with right-to-know laws, along with the European Union, and interviews with freedom of information experts worldwide. Read the rest of this entry »