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Open Access in Peril for EU Documents?

[Cross posted on legalresearchplus]

Shrinking access to EU documents? This is from a press release on the European Ombudsman site:

“The European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, has called on the European Parliament (EP) to defend the European Union’s commitment to transparency and the citizens’ right of access to EU documents. This follows the European Commission’s recent proposals to revise the law on public access to documents. In his contribution to today’s public hearing in the EP’s LIBE Committee (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs), the Ombudsman said:

“The Commission’s proposals would mean access to fewer, not more, documents. This raises fundamental issues of principle about the EU’s commitment to openness and transparency.”

Read the entire contribution given by the Ombudsman

The EU proposals sharply limit the definition of what is a “document” — ”The Commission’s proposed definition of a document would mean that, in many cases, citizens could only apply for access to a document if it appeared in a register.”

Read the full text of the EU proposal to revise Regulation 1049/2001: “Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents” [4/30/2008]

Hat tip to the lawlibrarians blog for tracking this!

Univ. of Pittsburgh to Digitize EU Delegation Collection

The following message was sent to the EURODOC listserv by Phil Wilkin, Social Sciences Bibliographer and Editor of the Archive of European Integration at the University of Pittsburgh. Very good news!

The Delegation of the European Commission to the US, Washington, DC, recently decided to divulge itself of its entire depository collection and award it to 1 of the existing depository libraries in North America. The Delegation awarded this collection to the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, currently the home of the Archive of European Integration (AEI). This depository collection begins in the early 1950s and is easily the largest EU collection in the Western Hemisphere. Over the next several years, the AEI will digitize many documents from this collection and upload them.

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