EU commission urged to improve expert group 'transparency'

Publication date: 
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Author: 
Martin Banks
Media title: 
Parliament Magazine

"The European commission has been accused of failing to recognise the "full scale" of the problem of an alleged lack of transparency in its expert groups. The claim was made by the Brussels-based group ALTER-EU, which has demanded a "fairer" composition of the groups which provide the commission with external expertise for its decision making."

Excerpt: 

The commission has also recognised that there is ''industry over-representation'' in many groups and has ''committed to rebalance the membership of more than 50 groups''. 

Alter-EU, though, says that there are "many more" expert groups that need "significant" changes in their composition.

In the commission's enterprise directorate, for example, the executive sees the need to "re-balance" 17 groups, while Alter-EU says there are, in fact, as many as 33 expert groups with "unbalanced composition".

It goes on to say that all documents produced by expert group meetings, including reports, agendas, minutes and participants' submissions, should be published "unless there is a clear reason for not providing this information".

A spokesman for Alter-EU said, "The commission has recognised the problem, but not the full scale of it.