An Overall Policy on Transparency

In recent years, the Council’s activities have become more and more open and visible. Since the Council is the Union’s main decision-making institution, and shares power of co-decision with the European Parliament for most of the Union’s legislative acts, its procedures are already open to a very large extent. Part of its deliberations are public and most of its official documents are accessible to the public.

From the second half of 2002 up to the end of 2005 the Council adopted in public 199 acts in codecision and deliberated publicly 117 times on co-decision files.

The Council also holds public debates on other major new legislative proposals as well as on policy debates on important issues which affect the interests of the Union and its citizens.

When the Council acts as legislator, the results of votes, the explanations of votes by Council members and the statements entered in the minutes are always made public.

In addition to the transparency provisions and further contributing to openness, regular press briefings are held before and after each Council meeting.

Based on the Seville European Council conclusions (2002) and the Council’s Rules of Procedure, the transparency procedures were reinforced through a series of specific measures decided by the Council in December 2005.

To complete these measures, the European Council today agreed on an overall policy on transparency, which further opens up the work of the Council by making all co-decision debates in the Council public.

The 15/16 June 2006 European Council Presidency conclusions on transparency are attached.

Brussels, 16 June 2006

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An Overall Policy on Transparency