We all know how difficult it can be to lay hands on new SEC documents
quickly. I'd be interested to know whether colleagues have found that the
Register of Commission Documents, launched last month, is helping in this
quest. My experience has been that the register is a great help in
identifying SEC documents, but doesn't offer any real assistance in finding
the documents themselves online. This is because it neither holds copies of
the documents, nor provides links to where they can be found.
You can apply for copies of the documents, of course, using the Access to
Documents procedure, but this takes time. Sometimes the DG responsible for
a SEC document may make it available on its website, but this often happens
rather tardily. Prelex can occasionally help, but usually does no more than
confirm the existence of the document without providing a link to it.
Rather bizarrely, the best way of accessing recent SEC documents is often
via the Register of Council Documents (http://register.consilium.eu.int/).
This is because the Commission transmits a large proportion of its working
papers and similar documents to the Council, which immediately circulates
them to its members, and puts the texts, if non-confidential, into its own
register, from where they can be downloaded. A few recent examples of
Commission Staff Working Papers accessible in this way are:
SEC(2002) 833: White Paper Food Safety Action Plan - Status July 2002
SEC(2002) 630: Results of the public consultation: Towards a strategic
vision of life sciences and biotechnology
SEC(2002) 698: Report of the R&D expert group on countering the
effects of biological and chemical terrorism
Does anyone else find it odd that the Commission has to depend on the
Council to provide rapid access to Commision SEC documents?
Regards,
Chris Lamb
CORDIS
Brussels
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