madam president a recent report by the uk-based ngo the taxpayers alliance said that eu membership costs every man woman and child in the united kingdom gbp two zero each year
i have to say that many of my constituents in the north east of england think they get very bad value for such a large sum of money
therefore ensuring public access to the documents of the european institutions is the very least that those constituents could expect in return for handing over such large sums to the eu every year
in the eyes of many people the eu remains a very obscure and monolithic entity
anything that we can do to improve access to give more information to the public on some of the things that perhaps some of our commissioners and others would rather keep confidential is very welcome
already we see whistleblowers and others that have been vilified and hounded out of their jobs for exposing confidential information
if all that information had been available in the first place then perhaps many of those over-the-top reactions would have been unnecessary
