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The foundation organised in cooperation with International European Movement an international seminar on democracy and transparency in the European Union, 1 December 2006, in the Parliament of Finland, Helsinki.

The president of the European Movement and a former president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, discussed the transparency of the European project.

The seminar marked the 240th Anniversary of world´s first Freedom of Information legislation, adopted in Sweden-Finland. Enlightment thinker and politician Anders Chydenius (1729-1803) played a crucial role in creating this Act that abolished political censorship and provided public with an access to government documents (2 December 1766).
According to the message of Pat Cox, EU citizens deserve to know the size, the shape and the aspirations of the new Europe.

"This year marks another anniversary as regards open access to files, the 240th to be exact and it too is another first. Finland shares with Sweden the world¿s longest standing tradition of open access to government files. This dates to an earlier era when as a Swedish-governed territory, the Swedish ¿Access to Public Records Act 1766¿ applied to Finland. It was the first ever freedom of information law but it was introduced by a Finnish clergyman and Member of Parliament named Anders Chydenius. When Finland became an independent republic in 1919, its new Constitution incorporated the inherited right of freedom of information. Today the ¿Act on the Openness of Government Activities 1999¿ provides for a general right to access any ¿official document¿ in the public domain, held by public authorities and private bodies that exercise public authority, including electronic records.

The result has been that the modern state of Finland appears at the top end of every international comparative index of good governance including openness and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption. It is a proof of how openness and transparency are at the heart both of a healthy democracy and of good governance. And so this brings me to my wider theme this morning: ¿Democracy and Transparency in the EU today.¿

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I believe that Europe also needs what Schuman called ¿a common purpose¿. That is less visible today than it needs to be. To drive it forward it demands consistent and determined leadership, from our capital cities no less than from Brussels, from our European and national political parties and from all those in civil society willing to stand up and be counted.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome we should use that moment creatively. The statement of our generation¿s level of ambition should be high. The European Commission and the European Parliament have a particularly heavy responsibility in this regard since uniquely they are charged with a Union-wide duty of care, although it is the German Presidency that is responsible for drafting the text of the proposed Berlin Declaration. I propose that we in the European Movement should assume our responsibilities as part of Europe¿s avant garde and lead a Declaration on behalf of pro European civil society to mark this historic anniversary.

As convinced Europeans our first major act of political transparency should be to acknowledge that if we wish to ask Europeans to subscribe to the new Europe in the new century, they surely deserve to know something more definite about the size, the shape and the aspirations of the political society they are being invited to embrace. Popular, as distinct from populist, fears about a process of expansion and a pace of change that appears to many citizens to be boundless and unstoppable need to be addressed by more than ambiguity.

We need to learn how to expand our European soft power and how to promote and defend our common EU values and interests in smart power terms but do so without the constant expansion of our borders. Then we need to explain this in plain language and with political conviction. We need to reassure public opinion that we can design systems of economic governance and sustainable social solidarity with an emphasis on employability fit for our times. We need to establish the capacity for the European Union to stay ahead in the global competitive race without diluting our commitment to internal and international solidarity. We need to ensure our wider security in terms of climate change, energy supply, the integrity of our borders and the fight against international crime and terror. We need to establish clearly that we can finance our ambitions.

We can do this. It was Jean Monnet who taught us how a setback in one field can generate advances in another. But we will not do it by ignoring the lessons of Europe¿s modern past. Building appropriate institutions, practising dynamic multilateralism within and without and honestly addressing anxieties rather than avoiding them is indispensable to success. We know because we have been there and done that before and it worked.

Programme (view videos of introductions)

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