WRITTEN QUESTION E-3407/02

by Armando Cossutta (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(29 November 2002)

Subject: Transparency and access to information in the field of public procurement

Transparency in the workings of the Community institutions and easy and immediate access to EU information in its sectors of economic activity are two basic components in the development of the information society envisaged by the Lisbon European Council of March 2000.

Given that this is the case, it is not sufficiently easy in practice to access information in the field of public procurement in the EU. On the basis of numerous tests conducted, simply accessing the link to the public procurement supplement to the Official Journal of the European Communities takes an average of three hours, when under ideal conditions it should be possible to obtain the required information in less than 10 minutes.

In the light of these difficulties, and considering that many of the web pages on the EU site, including the guide on how to use certain links, only exist in English, can the Commission indicate:

1. whether it considers that there is a need for all EU web pages to be available in translation, so that everyone can benefit from all the telematics services available even if they do not have an excellent command of English, thereby preventing information exclusion, which would limit the transparency of use of the Internet as a means of development;

2. whether it feels that sectors which present opportunities for the direct involvement of private individuals and undertakings should provide for improved access via IT links that are as user-friendly as possible?

Answer given by Ms Reding on behalf of the Commission

(31 January 2003)

The Commission attaches great importance to transparency and the accessibility of information in the field of public procurement taken directly from the public procurement Directives(1).

Public contract notices are available on the Internet to citizens and enterprises via the on-line TED Tenders Electronic Daily information service (http://ted.publications.eu.int). Access to this service has been free since July 1998. Public contract notices are available on this site simultaneously in the EU's current eleven official languages, and this service will also offer the future official languages following the enlargement of the European Union.

The difficulties mentioned by the Honourable Member are totally unacceptable for a public service. The Commission has spoken to the services involved, particularly the Publications Office, which is responsible for running the TED service and SIMAP (the information system for public procurement http://simap.eu.int). Its inquiries have revealed that these services have never been contacted by users complaining about access times as slow as those mentioned by the Honourable Member.

The TED, SIMAP and Europa (http://europa.eu.int) services are, moreover, subject to regular technical surveillance to ensure that they are always available (24 hours a day, 7 days a week), as are all the Commission's key computer applications. Links to the TED and SIMAP services appear on a page dedicated to public procurement on the Europa site (see Information sources How to find information on Europa Public procurement http://europa.eu.int/geninfo/info/guide/index_en.htm

proc).

The problems mentioned in accessing information must therefore be due to external factors which do not relate to the services themselves and over which the Commission has no control. They may well be caused by heavy traffic on the Internet and problems experienced by the Internet access providers.

The Commission has set up various mechanisms to provide assistance for citizens and enterprises, such as Europe Direct (http://europa.eu.int/europedirect), Dialogue with business (http://europa.eu.int/business/), Your voice in Europe (http://europa.eu.int/yourvoice) and user helpdesks for all its information systems. These services should be notified immediately of any access difficulties of the type mentioned by the Honourable Member.

The answers to the other questions asked by the Honourable Member are as follows:

1. The Commission systematically publishes official documents in all the official languages of the European Union, in particular in the Official Journal (Legislation and Communication series and the Supplement for public contract notices). This principle has been extended to include electronic publications.

In addition to the official documents, the Europa Internet service (http://europa.eu.int) offers the general public a vast amount of unofficial information. It is the Commission's policy to publish information documents in all the official languages on the European Union's achievements. These are aimed at the general public and disseminated via the inter-institutional pages which the Commission produces under the aegis of the Internet Inter-institutional Editorial Committee on behalf of all the institutions. Subject to budgetary provisions and technical constraints, this will remain a priority objective after the next enlargement. In order to avoid any information exclusion, the Commission is also striving to increase the number of languages in which specialist information is available on its site (http://europa.eu.int/comm). The success of these efforts depends to a great extent on personnel and budgetary constraints and the technology for running multilingual sites.

2. The Commission and the other Institutions have embarked on a huge operation to modernise the Internet sites open to citizens and enterprises. The purpose of this operation is to improve their accessibility, layout and user-friendliness, mainly by adopting a thematic approach which is directly related to the EU's activities, and increasing the number of interactive services which allow citizens to become more directly involved in the activities of the European Union.

The Members of the European Commission have, over the past few years, taken part in on-line discussions with Internet users. These discussions are conducted simultaneously in all the official languages whenever the topic for discussion is open to the general public.

When the work in question is directly related to national activities, the direct input from citizens and enterprises is sometimes conveyed only in the languages of the Member States concerned.

(1) Council Directive 92/50/EEC of 18 June 1992 relating to the coordination of procedures for the award of public service contracts OJ L 209, 24.7.1992, et seq.