{"id":12608,"date":"2014-07-31T15:24:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T13:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/s1-advancing-the-right-to-know\/c2-european-union\/12608"},"modified":"2020-01-29T11:25:29","modified_gmt":"2020-01-29T10:25:29","slug":"ombudsman-investigates-ttip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/2014-07-31\/ombudsman-investigates-ttip\/","title":{"rendered":"European Ombudsman urges proactive transparency of EU-US trade talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Madrid, 31 July 2014<\/em> \u2013 Access Info Europe today welcomed the decision by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ombudsman.europa.eu\/en\/press\/release.faces\/en\/54636\/html.bookmark\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">European Ombudsman<\/a> to call for more proactive disclosure of documents to stakeholders surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, and to open investigations into the Council of the EU and EU Commission\u2019s lack of transparency around these talks.<\/p>\n<p>Ombudsman Emily O\u2019Reilly has offered a range of practical measures to enable timely public access to TTIP documents, and to details of meetings with stakeholders. Referring to the pro-transparency jurisprudence established by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.access-info.org\/eut\/12303\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Access Info\u2019s case against the Council<\/a> (won in October 2013) as well as by the July 2013 ruling in <a title=\"In \u2018t Veld Ruling\" href=\"http:\/\/www.access-info.org\/eut\/12603\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the case of In \u2018t Veld against the European Commission<\/a>, the Ombudsman questioned the assertion of public harm in the disclosure of the EU negotiating directives for the on-going negotiations.<\/p>\n<p>\u00ab<em>The TTIP will be the biggest bilateral free trade agreement in history. It raises concerns for environmental, health and consumer protection, and yet there is far too little information available to the public which will be directly affected<\/em>,\u00bb stated Pam Bartlett Quintanilla, Campaigner with Access Info Europe.<\/p>\n<p>In May 2014, over 250 civil society organisations, including Access Info, called on EU Commissioner De Gucht to increase transparency of the TTIP process. In spite of these calls, far too little information is publicly available. A number of TTIP-related requests have also been made through the request platform AsktheEU.org but have not resulted in significant disclosure of documents; some requests are still ongoing.<\/p>\n<p>\u00ab<em>We are at a crucial moment in the history of EU transparency and this is a test case for the principle that we citizens have a right to know about, follow and participate in key decision making processes<\/em>,\u00bb added Helen Darbishire, Executive Director, Access Info Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Access Info Europe calls for the publication of the negotiating mandate, all documents submitted by the European Union during the negotiations, and the negotiating texts themselves.<\/p>\n<h1>For more information, please contact:<\/h1>\n<p><strong>Helen Darbishire,<\/strong> Access Info Europe<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/mce_host\/&quot;mailto:helen@access-info.org&quot;\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">helen@access-info.org<\/a> | +34 667 685 319<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Madrid, 31 July 2014 \u2013 Access Info Europe today welcomed the decision by the European Ombudsman to call for more proactive disclosure of documents to stakeholders surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, and to open investigations into the Council of the EU and EU Commission\u2019s lack of transparency around these talks. Ombudsman Emily O\u2019Reilly has offered a range of practical measures to enable timely public access to TTIP documents, and to details of meetings with stakeholders. Referring to the pro-transparency jurisprudence established by Access Info\u2019s case against the Council (won in October 2013) as well as by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eut","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12608","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=12608"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32366,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12608\/revisions\/32366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}