Mr President, ladies and gentlemen and all those who have participated in this process, the European Parliament is about to vote on the proposal for a Regulation concerning public access to documents of the EU institutions. The proposal was prepared jointly by Parliament, the Council and the Commission within the framework of what has been termed tripartite collaboration. This new Regulation is a step towards a more open and more democratic EU in as much as the work of the bureaucrats is to be subject to public scrutiny. The point of departure must be that all documents are to be accessible to the public. Obviously, there are exceptions to this main rule, just as there are from the Swedish principle of public access to official records, but the number of exceptions has been significantly reduced in comparison with the original proposal and is now limited to what is absolutely necessary to protect mainly military and security interests, commercial secrets and information about the private lives of individuals. Every document must be examined on its own merits, and a new examination must take place in response to each new enquiry from the public. A document may only be withheld if making it available would harm some aspect of the public interest. In previous proposals, it was enough that releasing a document might harm the public interest. To make things easier for the general public, there must be a register listing all documents, and both the register and the documents must, as far as possible, be available on the Internet. These are some aspects of the progress that has been achieved in the course of the tough negotiations of recent months. There are still critics of the compromise. They should consider that most EU countries do not have anything approaching the Swedish principle of public access to official records and that a number of these countries think that the issue is incomprehensible and its significance overrated. To vote against the proposal because 100 per cent of what was desired has not been achieved would be frivolous. Is it sensible to go hungry just because a three-course meal has not been offered? The demand for the proposal to be overhauled before the European elections in 2004 is a prerequisite for public support. This will facilitate a subsequent improvement of the text in the event of political opposition, so that the electorate can influence the issue, partly by the way in which they vote. The result that has been achieved has been presented as a victory for the Swedish Presidency and, because transparency has been a key issue for the Swedish Government, it would have been a clear failure on the Government’s part if it had had to hand it as a gift to the forthcoming Presidency. I should nonetheless like to add something to that picture – not take the victory away from the Swedish Presidency, but nonetheless supplement the picture. The Prime Minister, Mr Persson is known for being a proponent of the intergovernmental model, on the basis of which citizens exercise little control. A theoretical, but relevant, issue in connection with the debate on transparency is that of how the result would have looked on the basis of Mr Persson’s intergovernmental model. How much control would the public have exercised then? The Commission’s and the Council’s original proposal was completely unacceptable from the perspectives both of transparency and citizenship. The answer has been given: Parliament is the institution which has stood up for transparency and which it has been possible to use as a lever during the negotiations in the Council. Without Parliament’s hard fight for more transparency, and without the codecision procedure, no such commendable result would have been achieved. I want to conclude by extending heartfelt gratitude to Mr Cashman, Mrs Maij-Weggen, Mr Watson, Mrs Hautala and Mrs Malmström, as well as to Commissioner Barnier, who has made a major contribution in the Commission, and, finally, to the committee secretariat.

Political group: PPE-DE