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| Mr Jurgen Trumpf Ref /CP/073/97 Brussels, December 15, 1997
Dear Mr Trumpf, As you will know, negotiations have been proceeding for some 18 months with a view to finalising the above mentioned Convention for signature in Aarhus, Denmark, in June 1998. As its long title suggests, the Convention will cover a number of key issues lying at the heart of participatory democracy and the environment, as they affect the public authorities and citizens of Parties. Member States of the European Union are expected to become Parties. However, whether the European Commission will sign the Convention so as to apply it to EU institutions remains unclear. The primary purpose of this letter is to urge the Council to agree with the Commission to do so. Representatives of the Commission have been attending the negotiations throughout, the issues are well understood and since an early stage draft text has countenanced EU applicability. We applaud the Amsterdam Treaty's clear signalling of the need for the EU to improve its democratic credentials (such as the new Article 191a). Indeed, to do otherwise would be counter-productive. And, as citizens of the Union, we have an obvious interest in ensuring that the Treaty's provisions are translated into practical reality: the EU institutions are our institutions. The rights of access to environmental information, of public participation in decisions that affect the environment and of access to the courts in environmental matters are all issues that are of as much relevance to citizens at the level of EU institutions as at the level of public authorities in Member States. Occasionally, depending upon the circumstances, they will be of more relevance. We recognise that the EU still has a long way to travel along the road to being seen by the public as democratic and transparent. As such, in the Convention we see both an appropriate and necessary legal basis for the relationship of the rights of EU citizens with their institutions, and an excellent opportunity for the continuation of this journey. It would, in our view, be misleading with regard to the democratic aspirations of the EU if the Commissioner signs the Convention at Aarhus on the basis of the 'Member State - EU competence' question, but not on the basis that the EU itself is prepared to take on substantially the same duties as Member States. Accordingly, we urge the EU to indeed accept the Convention as relevant in all its elements for the EU Institutions. We request you to officially raise this issue before the Council. One other issue which we wish to draw to your attention is the impact of the EU co-ordination process on the transparency of the negotiations as a whole. An important characteristic of these negotiations has been the fact that each individual country's negotiating position (insofar as it has had an influence on the negotiations) has been known by the meeting, and through the NGOs, by the public. With the EU positions increasingly being presented by the Commission, it is no longer clear what positions the individual EU countries are adopting within the EU co-ordination process, which have an influence on the common EU position. As the EU countries tend to be among the more active participants in the negotiations, accounting for more than half the speaking time, the impact of this is that a substantial part of the real negotiations is no longer taking place in the public domain. In a letter to the President of the Council dated 4 September 1997, written together with 5 other European environmental organisations, we proposed some measures to introduce more transparency into the EU co-ordination process. We did not yet receive a response to that letter. In our view, it is important that some mechanism for establishing greater transparency is introduced. Otherwise, the EU will be increasingly cast in a bad light in the negotiations, as the only group of countries where individual countries positions are put forward in secret while still having a significant impact of the negotiations. Given the short timeframe available for the negotiations, this may require an imaginative solution but we ask you to give urgent consideration to this possibility. Yours sincerely, John Hontelez Cc. Ministers for the Environment of the EU mara.silina@foeeurope.org - Public Participation Campaign - webmaster |
