Working groups in the Commission
A working group consists typically of one or more representatives of each country under the direction of the Commission in Brussels. The Commission has about 3000 secret working groups to manage policy areas and present ideas and proposals. They are also used to create networks in order to secure support for the Commission’s thinking and proposals.
José Manuel Barroso gave Jens-Peter Bonde an incomplete list of 3094 working groups on the day the European Parliament voted to appoint him as Commission President in 2004. The list is known in the Commission as the Bonde List. Six months later the Commission officially published a list of 1684 working groups on its website: management committees and various other groups had by then been excluded from the list. The Commission President also promised to give the European Parliament the names of advisers in the many working groups. But Barroso was persuaded by his staff to go back on his promise, referring to the rules on personal information.
Subsequently, the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control unanimously demanded disclosure of the names. The Commission is preparing internally to supply the names of the many working groups, which they have been very successful in keeping secret for all these years.
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