Access to Environmental Information in the EU: A Great Policy No‐One Needs?

Abstract

It is commonly argued that public institutions resist the advance of transparency, while civil society organisations (CSOs) are expected to advocate for more generous transparency laws that allow them to better participate in decision‐making. Remarkably, the way in which transparency developed in the Environment Council at least partially contradicts both claims. Here, the Council oversaw a steady expansion in the formal transparency policy framework, without notable resistance from the Council or its members. Yet from the outset, CSOs hardly made use of their transparency rights to obtain access. This article seeks an explanation for this apparently anomalous development in informal norms. Applying a qualitative case‐study analysis of multiple data sources, it demonstrates how informal norms develop alongside the formal access regime, implicating external actors, serving diverse and at times contradictory objectives, and showing a dynamic character over time. The findings highlight the indispensability of informality for understanding formal transparency policies.

The European Green Deal: What Prospects for Governing Climate Change With Policy Monitoring?

“…The Oxford English Dictionary defines the adjective "transparent" as "easily seen through, recognised, understood, or detected; manifest, evident, obvious, clear" and transparency in turn as "the quality or condition of being transparent." The core idea behind the concept of transparency is that knowledge about the behaviour of others, in turn, changes behaviour (or policies) or reinforces desirable actions (but there are also cautionary voices, see Hillebrandt, 2020;Weikmans et al, 2020). Relatedly, Elinor Ostrom (1990, p. 45) stresses that "[w]ithout monitoring, there can be no credible commitment; without credible commitment, there is no reason to propose new rules."…”