EN - Readout from the College Meeting by Frans Timmermans 19.11: We had a more extensive discussion on #transparency. As you know, it was one of the priorities announced by President Juncker, that the Commission, this new Commission would be more transparent, would have more rules, creating greater transparency. We framed the debate today so that we can take the formal decision next week when we meet. In essence, #Commissioners will give full transparency on their #agendas, we will make sure that people we meet are also on the #register, and we will make sure that everybody can follow what #interests are represented when meeting Commissioners, so that this initiative by President Juncker, which was very much supported when he talked about this in the European Parliament, is indeed implemented before the end of this year, as per the commitment President Juncker made. I strongly believe in this, I think weve moved from a time governments used to have an attitude towards the public of: #TrustMe! ; thats sort of my grand-parents era, to a situation now where the public says to government : #ShowMe!. And we want to show, very clearly what were doing, we want to be fully transparent about the meetings we have, we want to be accountable for everything we do in the Commission, and we want to convince also European Parliament & Council of the European Union to follow suit, because you know, there is always the demand of the Commission to be transparent, and we heard that, and we will act upon it, but I think that it is also time that we ask of Council and Parliament to follow suit, because if they do the same things we are going to be doing before the end of this year, I think transparency of the whole institution framework of the EU will be greatly enhanced. There is a specific issue of transparency linked with #TTIP and Cecilia Malmström will elaborate on that. (...) We had a brief discussion on #plasticbags, since we all share the goal of combating this polluting element in our environment, its very important that we do something about the plastic soup in our oceans ; its of extreme importance that we create a circular economy and combat this waste. The Commission has put forward a proposal to attain this goal. Council & Parliament fully share our goals, Council & Parliament have come to an agreement on how to implement this goal ; I would just caution them in terms of the implementation, there might be some issues implementing this later down the road, but thats up to member states to look at. As far as the Commission is concerned, there is this agreement, the Commission is happy that we can take the issue of combatting this polluting element forward with this decision. (Statement by Cecilia Malmström on Transparency and TTIP.) © Frédérick Moulin 2014 - EU2014 - All rights reserved.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 16:52:32 +0000