{"id":11167,"date":"2009-11-18T19:22:09","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T18:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/uncategorized\/11167"},"modified":"2020-02-14T11:42:36","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T10:42:36","slug":"question-to-brussels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/2009-11-18\/question-to-brussels\/","title":{"rendered":"Question to Brussels"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Question for Brussels: How should a citizen request EU documents?<\/h2>\n<p>At the end of 2009, Access Info filed access to information\u00a0requests with the 16 Directorate Generals of the European Union. The aim was to\u00a0monitor whether or not their\u00a0internal\u00a0guidelines on answering information requests were\u00a0of a\u00a0good enough standard.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0findings of Access Info&#8217;s research,\u00a0published in\u00a0the report <a href=\"http:\/\/www.access-info.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Question_to_Brussels.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u00abQuestion for Brussels: How should a citizen request EU documents?\u00bb<\/a> include a serious barrier to access posed by languages: only two of the 16 DGs had an internet page about access to documents in all the official languages of the EU. \u201cIf you don\u2019t speak English, you will fall at the first hurdle when trying to access EU information,\u201d said Helen Darbishire of Access Info.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor members of the public, it\u2019s hard to know where to start if you have a question for Brussels,\u201d she added. \u201cFor those concerned about reducing the public perception of the European Union as distant and impenetrable, making it easier to ask a question would be a very good place to start\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Poor document management was another issue: DG Employment responded saying they had no internal guidelines on how to answer access to information requests; a couple of weeks later an e-mail was received with the guidelines (in French) attached.<\/p>\n<p>In total, only half of the 16 DGs had and\u00a0 provided internal guidelines; DG Competition refused to disclose its internal guidelines on the grounds that they would \u201charm the decision-making process\u201d and \u201chad not been validated by the Commission\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The research found lack of clarity about the rules for access to documents is leading to problems in the treatment of requests for information. One serious failing is that most of the guides, including that of the Secretariat General are out of date and do not give guidance on how to interpret the rules in line with recent European Court of Justice jurisprudence.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The recommendations in the report include: <\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2666\u00a0 The Secretariat General should make public and review all internal guidelines on access to documents and should ensure that they conform to the rules and relevant court jurisprudence and Ombudsman decisions<\/li>\n<li>\u2666\u00a0 Serious attention should be paid to the DG Trade internal guidelines which are a great variance from the norm (and possibly the DG Competition)<\/li>\n<li>\u2666\u00a0 The EU as a whole should make the process of requesting information more transparent to the public, for example with an \u201caccess to information\u201d button on the front page of the website of each EU body;<\/li>\n<li>\u2666\u00a0 Ensure that all DGs receive, acknowledge, and process requests for documents;<\/li>\n<li>\u2666\u00a0 Address the language issue and ensure that information about the access to documents rules and the request forms are in all EU languages;<\/li>\n<li>\u2666\u00a0 Make sure that the public is not obliged to provide information about themselves more than the basic name, e-mail or address, and description of the information requested.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.access-info.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Question_to_Brussels.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-full wp-image-10727\" src=\"http:\/\/www.access-info.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/file_pdf.png\" alt=\"file_pdf\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" \/> Download the Report: Question to Brussels<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question for Brussels: How should a citizen request EU documents? At the end of 2009, Access Info filed access to information\u00a0requests with the 16 Directorate Generals of the European Union. The aim was to\u00a0monitor whether or not their\u00a0internal\u00a0guidelines on answering information requests were\u00a0of a\u00a0good enough standard. The\u00a0findings of Access Info&#8217;s research,\u00a0published in\u00a0the report \u00abQuestion for Brussels: How should a citizen request EU documents?\u00bb include a serious barrier to access posed by languages: only two of the 16 DGs had an internet page about access to documents in all the official languages of the EU. \u201cIf you don\u2019t speak English, you<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":32663,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pub-and-toolkits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32667,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11167\/revisions\/32667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}