Ministry of Justice of Finland organised together with the Parliament of Finland a seminar on the reform of Regulation 1049/2001 on access to EU documents. The seminar was held on 11 December 2008 in Brussels, in the premises of the Permanent Representation of Finland to the EU.

The Commission gave a proposal to reform the EU's current Regulation on access to documents from 2001 in April 2008. According to the Commission, the purpose of its proposal is to increase transparency. Finland believes, however, that if adopted in the proposed form, the proposal would be more restrictive than the current rules on access to documents. The Commission proposes to exclude some document categories totally from the scope of implementation of the Regulation. The Commission also proposes that documents be accessible to the public only if they are registered and meet certain technical requirements.

The purpose of the seminar is to enable a wider discussion of the reforms proposed by the Commission and to seek alternative solutions to the challenges identified by the Commission that would be compatible with the objective of increasing openness in the Union.

The seminar was held in English. The contributions will be published on these pages after the seminar.

Press release: Finland organises a seminar on the reform of regulation 1049/2001 on access to EU documents in Brussels on 11 December

Links:
Regulation 1049/2001 on access to documents (pdf)
The Commission Proposal (pdf)