2023-05-26 12:00:10
The damning report the accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people (Ehpad) in Neuilly-sur-Seine years before the Orpea scandalthe data that revealed the extent of inequalities between schoolsthe ratings of professional fees of Anne Hidalgo… These press revelations, and many others, have been made possible by the existence of laws that compel transparency from public institutions. But the exercise of this right is fragile: in France as in Europe, governments and administrations sometimes compete in ingenuity to obstruct the right to communicate public documents.
This observation, shared by many investigative journalists, is at the origin of the “Missing mails” project. Ten media from seven European countries, including The worldthe German daily The worldthe Dutch website Follow the Money or the Belgian daily The timehave come together to document these blockages.
The secret meetings between Uber and a European commissioner
On May 3, 2016, former European Commissioner for Digital Neelie Kroes is hired by Uber. Seeing in this “revolving door” the possible sign of a return to favor following favorable decisions granted by Mme Kroes, the NGO Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) asks to consult the correspondence and the minutes of the meetings between the commissioner and the multinational during her mandate, as permitted by European regulations on access to administrative documents.
The response from the European Commission seems to dispel all doubts: according to the institution’s research, Neelie Kroes did not exchange any emails with Uber, and her office only met with representatives of the group once.
The story would have ended there if a former high-level lobbyist had not leaked, in July 2022, a sum of confidential documents on Uber. These “Uber Files” reveal in particular the existence of numerous meetings and correspondence between the platform’s lobbyists and the commissioner’s team, and even a meeting with Neelie Kroes herself, who negotiated her hiring before the end of her mandate, in contravention of the rules in force. Exchanges of which there was no trace in the archives communicated to CEO by the European Commission in 2016.
Was this information deliberately hidden by the Brussels institution, or had it simply been deleted from its archives? When questioned, the European Commission refused to answer this question, but considers that it handled this request for documents in the rules.
You have 66.53% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
#missing #letters #hinder #government #transparency