European Parliament criticises Draft Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents

In its report calling for more transparency of the EU institution agreed upon yesterday (now published in a provisional version [1 MB doc-file; from page 160]), the European Parliament expresses concerns over the Draft Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents.

This document has been discussed by the Parliamentary Assembly (uniting national representatives of all 47 member states of the Council of Europe (as mentioned in this blog), and the report of the European Parliament makes a reference to these discussions in paragraph 19 (link added by me):

[The European Parliament] [t]akes note of the concerns expressed with regard to the Draft Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in its Opinion No. 270 (2008), and calls on Member States to include in the Draft Convention at least the amendments put forward by the members of that Assembly;

This is a good sign of interaction between national parliaments (represented in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) and the supranational European Parliament, and it shows that the concerns expressed by national parliamentarians are also shared by MEPs.

The member states of the European Union (and all the other 20 represented in the CoE) should therefore take due note of the concerns expressed by our elected legislators, both national and European!