Transparency in EU law-making

EU Treaties, Regulation 1049/2001 and the CJEU’s case law require the highest standard of transparency for EU law-making. Yet, some pivotal stages of the legislative process remain completely opaque until the relevant decisions are adopted. This paper focuses on three different stages of this process, namely the adoption of the Commission’s impact assessment, of the European Parliament’s report by MEPs in the relevant committee within shadow meetings and the adoption of the final text of legislation within trilogue meetings. It concludes that opposing efficiency to transparency is a misguided approach. © 2016, ERA.