Number of public debates of the Council of the European Union in 2006-2007... and travel costs for ministers

The Austrian Member of the European Parliament Hans-Peter Martin, who represents the Transparency Initiative in the EP has asked the Council of the European Union to report on the travel costs, the amount of agenda points, and the public and non-public voting of the Council.

From the draft reply (including the corrigendum) prepared by the Council secretariat, and the final answer presented to the parliamentarians on 24 November 2008 we can extract the following information:

Total number of Council meetings

2005: 69
2006: 76
2007: 67

Travel costs for Council meetings

2005: 29 162 000 Euros (= 422 638 per meeting)
2006: 30 779 000 Euros (= 404 987 per meeting)
2007: 34 637 000 Euros (= 516 970 per meeting)

Public debates on legislative acts under the co-decision procedure

2006: 174
2007: 148

Public debates under other legislative procedures

2006: 7
2007: 4

Public debates on specific issues, programmes, or priorities

2006: 56
2007: 36

Non-legislative acts adopted (generally not public)

2005: 292
2006: 327 (cf. total public debates: 237)
2007: 335 (cf. total public debates: 188)

It is quite hard to interpret these figures because the Council refused to give the total amount of agenda points to the parliamentarian, referring to the public documentation of Council meetings and saying that Mr Martin could do the counting himself.

But at least, we have some figures.