Open Government in the EUIn view of today’s challenges, is the EU’s approach to transparency sufficient, given that it is an atypical constitutional structure exercising sovereign powers across multiple levels of government and in constant need of explaining itself? Herwig Hofmann and Päivi Leino-Sandberg see room for reform.
18-19 September 2019: “Workshop: Inside the Black Box of Trilogues”, Utrecht University. Closed event.
24 September 2019: “Seminar: The future of EU transparency”, Finnish EU Presidency, Brussels. Closed event.
19-20 November 2019: “RECONNECT Conference: Transparency in the EU: mechanisms and practices”, Lille Catholic University (ESPOL). Abstract submission deadline: 20 September 2019. More information here.
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”.
The Dutch government, which currently holds the Presidency of the EU, has recently announced that it will host a “transparency unconference” in Amsterdam on 1 June.
