President European Commission

 

Dear President,

The European Commission’s system of expert groups plays a very important role in informing the decisions taken by the Commission. There are more than 1100 expert groups whose role is to provide the Commission with specialised advice.^[1]

In May 2016, the Commission revised its generally applicable rules on the creation and operation of Commission expert groups[2], following up on an Ombudsman inquiry.[3]

Concerns regarding how these rules are applied have been raised by civil society[4] and academics[5], as well as in the context of the Ombudsman’s public consultation on the transparency and participation in EU decision-making related to the environment[6].

This is why I have decided to open this strategic inquiry as a follow up to my earlier inquiry and to assess how the Commission applies its rules for expert groups.

I will focus in particular on how the Commission ensures that the transparency measures in its rules are complied with in a meaningful way.[7] In this context, I note that the Commission committed to improving data availability and reliability on the Register of expert groups among other transparency measures.

I would therefore be grateful if you could provide a reply to the questions in annex by 15 October 2024. We will make your reply public.

In case of questions, your staff can contact the inquiries officers responsible, Mr Koen Roovers and Ms Alice Bernard.

Yours sincerely,

Emily O'Reilly
European Ombudsman

Strasbourg, 01/07/2024

 

Annex - questions for the Commission

1) To enable the public to follow the developments within expert groups, participate in decision-making or to understand whether a given expert group is still active, up to date information on the activities of expert groups is essential.

a. Does the Commission offer any guidance to its staff members in charge of expert groups in relation to what documents expert groups are obliged to make public? If so, please provide relevant documents for inspection.

b. What does the Commission do to ensure that minutes on expert group meetings are meaningful? For example, do those responsible for drafting minutes on expert group meetings receive guidance in this regard? If so, please provide relevant documents for inspection.

c. How does the Commission ensure that all relevant documents, including agendas, are published in good time ahead of the meeting?

d. In cases of long established expert groups, minutes from meetings held in the past may no longer be accessible. Does the Commission remove older minutes? If so, what are the criteria for doing so?

2) In agreement with the competent Commission departments, an expert group may, by simple majority of its members, decide that its deliberations are public.

a. How many expert groups have been streaming their meetings online?

b. What incentives has the Commission put in place to encourage further openness and accessibility of expert groups’ activities for the public?

By contrast, some expert groups with observers may have closed sessions, meaning that these sessions are closed to accredited observers.

c. On what basis does an expert group decide to hold sessions that are closed to accredited stakeholder observers, and when are such closed door meetings considered appropriate?

d. How many expert groups have held sessions that are closed to accredited stakeholder observers?

3) Documents related to the work of expert groups can be found in various online locations, including the expert group register, a dedicated expert group website, a DG platform, or the CIRCABC platform, or in the register of delegated acts and implementing acts^[8]. From the perspective of citizens, navigating these registers can be challenging and can complicate their contributing in a timely and meaningful way to the work of expert groups.

a. Can the Commission explain why it uses various platforms for storing and making public documents related to the work of expert groups?

b. Would the Commission consider streamlining its information environment, for example by creating a single searchable portal for all the relevant documents related to expert groups?  What would be the technical challenges to creating such a portal?

Moreover, to find a document on the expert group register or register of delegated acts, one needs to know: (i) that a document exists, (ii) what the exact title is, and (possibly) (iii) the meeting and expert group in which it was discussed, which complicates finding documents.

c. How can the Commission improve the search options for documents related to expert groups in the short term? For example, does the Commission provide guidance to its staff on producing keywords that are linked to documents, as well as on giving titles to documents, to optimise document searches?

4) When stakeholder observers are invited to submit comments in writing, it may not always be clear how comments are then taken into account by the expert group and the Commission.

a. How does the Commission ensure that it is clear to stakeholders how their views (and the views of other stakeholders) expressed in writing have been taken into account? For example, how often and in which circumstances does the Commission issue a table of “responses to comments”? If the Commission has issued guidance on this, please could it provide the relevant documents.

b. Are stakeholders’ views anonymised in such documents and if so, why?

 

[1] See: https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/expert-groups-register/screen/expert-groups-explained?lang=en.

[2] The Commission refers to these rules as the horizontal rules on the creation and operation of Commission expert groups, available here: https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/documents-register/detail?ref=C(2016)3301&lang=en.

[3] See the Decision of the European Ombudsman in her strategic inquiry OI/6/2014/NF concerning the composition and transparency of European Commission expert groups: https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/86030.

[4] See for example: https://corporateeurope.org/en/expert-groups/2017/02/corporate-interests-continue-dominate-key-expert-groups and https://eeb.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/NGO-Letter-on-the-functioning-of-the-Expert-Group-on-Carbon-Removals-and-its-meetings-June-2023.pdf.

[5] See for example: Radulova et al (2021) "The European Commission's Expert Groups: Adapting to the Contestation of Expertise", in The Contestation of Expertise in the EU, pp 91-121

[6] Public consultation on the transparency and participation in EU decision making related to the environment (SI/5/2022/KR). See: https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/document/en/168767.

[7] Other areas of Ombudsman interest concern the manner in which the Commission applies the provisions in its rules to prevent conflicts of interest, see for example the Decision of the Ombudsman on how the European Commission handled concerns about the composition of the High Level Forum on Capital Markets Union and alleged conflicts of interest of some of its members (case 1777/2020/KR).

[8] The register of delegated acts and implementing acts is constituted of two registers, namely the register of delegated act and the register of implementing acts. The latter is separate from the comitology register that also includes implementing acts and other relevant Commission draft acts that expert groups may also be consulted on.