Last week, the EU Parliament Civil Liberties committee – with the exception of the EPP group – voted in favour of a draft report which in essence supports more access to EU documents (see my blog post).

Here is how the EU Council sees the report:

“This draft report substantially restricts the possibility to refuse public access to documents (in particular COMP AM 6 [*], COMP AM 7, COMP AM 8, AM 28, AM 30), including limiting the possibility to refuse access to a document originating from a Member State (COMP AM 10).

The draft report also aims not only to include rules on the classification and declassification procedures in the regulation but also to limit possibilities to classify documents (AM 27 + AM 41).

Since the EPP was against this draft report, Ms Sommer (EPP, DE) requested that the EPP minority opinion be the subject of a written statement annexed to the draft report.

Next steps: the vote in plenary is planned for the December European Parliament plenary session.“

[*] The abbreviations “COMP AM” means “compromise amendments”, i.e. those amendments that have been agreed ahead of the meeting based on previously tabled amendments.

I think this summary and the amendments and compromise amendments mentioned above in the Council report on the committee meeting give a clear indication where the main conflicts will be between Parliament and Council.