Niveau juridique : Union européenne
texte de la question posée le 1-10-2015
Can the Commission confirm whether it supports increased transparency in the legislative decision-making process?
Would it support public access to the four-column document used in trilogues?
Can it outline in what way it believes that the trilogue process is transparent and open to public scrutiny?
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réponse du 30-11-2015 donné par Vice-President Timmermans au nom de la Commission
Tripartite meetings (‘trilogues’) constitute practical working arrangements followed by the co-legislators, i.e. the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, together with the Commission, in exercising their Treaty prerogatives to organise the conduct of the legislative activity. Trilogue meetings cannot take any formal decisions but rather prepare the formal decision-making within each of the EU institutions, in accordance with the Treaty rules and subject to the different but complementary democratic accountability of each of the institutions.
Each institution, according to its own practices, provides for internal circulation and publication of information, documents and reports related to trilogue meetings. In addition, public access to documents pertaining to the legislative procedure, including trilogue meeting reports and multi-column documents may be provided following requests filed on the basis of Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents.
The Commission wishes to confirm its attachment to transparency in the EU’s legislative work in line with Article 15 TFEU. In its proposal for a new Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Regulation, the Commission proposed that the three institutions shall ensure an appropriate degree of transparency of the legislative process, including of trilateral negotiations between them (point 28 of the proposal for an Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Regulation of 19 May 2015, COM(2015)0216). This proposal is currently under discussion between the Commission and the co-legislators.