First, he hopes that the European Commission will soon publish a draft regulation on public access to documents, as foreseen by the Amsterdam Treaty. The draft should require each institution to have a public register of all documents it holds and include incoming mail. Furthermore, although some documents must be kept confidential, the list of reasons for confidentiality should be precise and short. The second wish is for the European Union to tackle the issue of guaranteeing its respect for human rights. The Santer Commission proposed that the Union should sign the European Convention on Human Rights, but the Court of Justice decided this could not be done without changing the Union Treaties.
Concrete results are unlikely in the near future.
For good reasons, police co-operation in the European Union is intensifying and laws affecting delicate issues of asylum, immigration and the rights of foreigners are increasingly drafted at the Union level. Nowhere, however, can citizens find a clear statement of the human rights standards that the Union should respect. This would apply the same human rights standards to the European institutions that already apply to national administrations. To most citizens that would seem like an obviously reasonable idea. The Ombudsman would like to see an end to the European Commission's reluctance to provide, as a matter of routine, all the documents and information needed during the Ombudsman's investigations.