2 Mar 2018

European Commission starts publishing travel expenses proactively

2019-11-04T17:11:42+01:00

Madrid, 2 March 2018 – Access Info Europe has welcomed today the start of proactive publication of EU Commissioners travel expenses as a positive step towards greater transparency and accountability of spending of public funds. Proactive publication of this information had been a crucial demand of Access Info, which has led a campaign for greater transparency of travel expenses since 2014. Finally, in September 2017 the European Commission had announced changes to Commissioners’ code of conduct that would require publication of these expenses every two months. Since Wednesday (28 February 2018), the information is publicly available online, although it’s not

European Commission starts publishing travel expenses proactively2019-11-04T17:11:42+01:00
20 Feb 2017

Commission data reveals lobby transparency loopholes and corporate bias

2018-11-13T10:03:42+01:00

[Article first published by ALTER-EU.] President Juncker´s proactive transparency policy continues to fail to address loopholes in lobbying transparency rules and does not ensure balanced stakeholder consultation, according to a new analysis by the Alliance for Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU). Brussels/Madrid, 20 February 2017 - ALTER-EU criticised the loopholes in the Commission’s policy on lobby transparency after its latest research exposes that 81 per cent of lobby meetings with DG FISMA between January and July 2016 fell outside the current proactive transparency obligations. These meetings (held only with lower-level officials) are not subject to the Commission’s disclosure regime and

Commission data reveals lobby transparency loopholes and corporate bias2018-11-13T10:03:42+01:00
31 Jan 2017

Access Info calls on Commission to publish travel expenses data proactively

2018-11-13T10:03:43+01:00

Madrid, 31 January 2017 – Following a massive public response to Access Info’s campaign to crowd source requests for Commissioners’ expenses, the organisation has written to Vice President Frans Timmermans calling for the data to be proactively published. In under two days on Thursday 26 and Friday 27 January, a total of 119 people from across Europe submitted a total of 168 requests for access to the 2016 travel expenses claims of the 28 European Commissioners. “The rapid response to this campaign demonstrates the huge public interest in getting this information into the public domain,” stated Andreas Pavlou, Access Info’s

Access Info calls on Commission to publish travel expenses data proactively2018-11-13T10:03:43+01:00
5 Sep 2016

Record-keeping and timely publication of information are essential for meaningful participation Access Info tells Council of Europe

2018-11-13T10:04:00+01:00

Madrid, 5 September 2016 – Access Info has submitted recommendations to the Council of Europe on how to improve its Draft guidelines for meaningful civil participation in political decision-making so as to ensure that records are kept and that there is timely publication of relevant documents. This recommendation comes after research across Europe by Access Info and partners revealed abysmal levels of record keeping. For example, of 21 decision-making processes in nine countries, for half of them (10) no minutes of meetings had been created. Similarly, the research found that for only four of 34 processes were documents submitted by

Record-keeping and timely publication of information are essential for meaningful participation Access Info tells Council of Europe2018-11-13T10:04:00+01:00