Ministerrådet i EU vil ha enda mer hemmelighold.
----- Forwarded message from Herman Beun <hermanb@bigfoot.com> -----
From: "Herman Beun" <hermanb@bigfoot.com>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.europe.misc,talk.politics.european-union,england.politics.europe,alt.politics.british,alt.politics.ec,alt.politics.europe,dk.politik
Subject: Re: EU Secrecy measures
Followup-To: talk.politics.european-union,england.politics.europe,alt.politics.ec,dk.politik
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 12:24:43 +0200
Organization: deterministic chaos
[newsgroup list trimmed, dk.politik added]
R. Opstelten <jfkrik@erols.com> schreef in berichtnieuws
39ADC599.7D20@erols.com...
> http://www.geocities.com/eerstnl/news/secrecycode.html
>
> It details how the EU has decided while the Commission is on
> holiday, to restrict the access of citizens to information
> relating to everything from Immigration to drugs in the
> EU. Please read it, and pass it on.
Indeed. And how interesting that we never, ever, hear the British Tories
make as much noise about the issue of transparency as they normally do
about everything coming from the EU. It only proves to me that they are
not interested in the state of EU democracy _at_ _all_ (which is why
their EU criticism bears so little credibility).
Just one caveat: this is not an "EU" regulation adopted by "the EU"; the
text concerns only documents belonging to the Council of Ministers, and
was adopted in CoRePer (a Council institution consisting of national
civil servants). The Commission or the Parliament were in it for
nothing.
>From the link above:
> In response to the new rules, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the
> Netherlands issued a joint statement this month saying they
> believed that documents could be kept confidential without
> depriving citizens of the right to know what material is
> available.
Indeed, the only countries voting against that regulation were Sweden,
the Netherlands and Finland. The UK voted in favour of the new rules, as
did Germany and most other countries _including_ Denmark! France
abstained, Portugal tried to push for even more restrictive rules (!).
The Swedish, Finnish and Dutch representatives were steaming when they
left the meeting in which the new Council rules were adopted. The Dutch
representative said it was a "coup by the military".
The new measures, meant to improve cooperation between NATO and the WEU
although military secrets were covered sufficiently by the existing
rules already, were pushed through by Javier Solana. Solana is not only
Secretary-General of the Council, but also High Representative of the EU
for foreign and security policy, head of the unit for policy planning
and early warning, Secretary-General of the WEU and of course former
Secretary-General of NATO. He was appointed in this truly byzantine
accumulation of functions by the Member States (of course).
The attitude of Denmark is highly interesting. Why did it vote in
favour, but issued a declaration against the new rules later on? If the
vote in favour was a mistake, why is Denmark still trying to defend it?
Why was there no uproar in the Danish press about the Danish vote? Any
Danes wishing to comment?
-------------------------------------------------------------
Herman Beun http://www.bigfoot.com/~hermanb/
HermanB@bigfoot.com Brussel, Vlaanderen
-------------------------------------------------------------
European Parliament, ELDR (NL-D66), http://www.vanderlaan.net
-------------------------------------------------------------
*representative democracy is a contradiction in 4 year terms*
-------------------------------------------------------------
----- End forwarded message -----
--
______ _________________________________________________
/ | |
| jon | jonivar skullerud |
\______ | |
\ | jonivar@bigfoot.com |
ivar | | http://www.bigfoot.com/~jonivar/ |
_______/ |_________________________________________________|
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Sep 28 2000 - 11:01:21 MET DST