Mr President, Commissioner Barnier, Minister, the public access to documents regulation, better known as the Act on the public nature of Government, was approved in May this year after protracted negotiations. My colleague Mr Cashman, the President Mr Watson and myself were very closely involved in this. It was agreed at the time that the practical implementation had to be ready by 3 December, and that applied to all three institutions – the Council, the Commission and Parliament. The registers were to be ready by 3 June 2002, and today is 12 December. Where are we now, one week on from 3 December? Parliament approved its revised Rules of Procedure on 13 November, and Parliament’s Bureau saw to its implementation on 28 November. So as far as we are concerned, everything is in order. However, as Parliament we feel partly responsible for what the Commission and the Council do, and that is why we have opened this debate. First the Council: the Council adapted its Rules of Procedure to the regulation on 29 November and published them on 3 December – just in time, in other words. Two comments: firstly an earlier comment about the Solana decisions. It is not entirely clear from the Rules of Procedure whether or not the Solana decisions have been overruled by the regulation. Can Mrs Neyts please once again give us a very clear answer on this? And then a comment about Article 12, Paragraph 5, of the Council Decision, which states that notes, letters and suchlike relating to legislation and addressed to the Coreper, for example, are indeed covered by the regulation. However, Article 6 states that if Member States make comments about European legislation with regard to the Council or the Coreper in individual notes or letters, these do not have to be published. It seems to me that this is not acceptable. In the Netherlands, letters from a municipality to the national government always have to be published, and it seems to me that this should also be the case for Member States in respect of the Council. And then the Commission; the Commission implemented an amendment to the Rules of Procedure on 28 November and approved it on 5 December. Now, I am not quibbling over the two days’ delay, but I do have a few comments to make. The first is that the Commission has decentralised the implementation of the regulation. Is that wise? However, I have now heard Mr Barnier say that there will be one PO box and one e-mail address after all. So why is that not spelled out clearly in the Rules of Procedure? I cannot find it. My second comment is about the following problem: why hasn’t the Commission produced a clear definition of the term ‘document’, as Parliament and the Council have done? My third point is Article 8 of the Commission Decision. Why is it so vague about the author of the document? Is his name not allowed to be known if he is an official? After all, he puts his signature to it in this position, so I believe that this should fall under openness. It is also not entirely clear what will happen with the agencies. The Commissioner has said something about that, but has the Commission initiated anything in this area? And then the security rules. Nothing has been published about these either. Why have the Council’s security rules been published and not the Commission’s? And now to my last comment, and I would like to pick up on Mrs Neyts’ point. I do not know whether it is wise to have an interinstitutional committee on a non-political level. Do you have to do this on an official level? I am very hesitant about that. I think that more consultation is needed on this point; at least we have stated in our Rules of Procedure that one of our Vice-Presidents would have to be responsible for it and Parliament would have to back this pronouncement.

Political group: PPE-DE