Duitsland wil beperking van transparantie-initiatief landbouwsubsidies en structuurfondsen (en)

Germany is set to call for limiting a new transparency initiative from Brussels and introducing a threshold for making public the beneficiaries of EU funds.

There is a "danger of negative headlines that could put into question the entire EU support [programme] and scare off potential investors", economy minister Michael Glos warned in a written note sent to other German ministries, reports Financial Times Deutschland. Germany is set to fight the scope of the transparency initiative and get smaller beneficiaries excluded from public scrutiny. Mr Glos would like to see a threshold introduced whereby beneficiaries of less than €2 million would not have to be made public - he argued the threshold could help protect sensitive business information and prevent bureaucratic costs.

The German initiative is in response to EU administrative commissioner Siim Kallas ' proposal to start making public next year all information about who gets what amount money from EU coffers. Mr Kallas is acting under heavy pressure from MEPs and NGOs such as Farmsubsidy.org, which says the public should know who benefits from the EU's common agricultural policy and structural funds.

The commission is planning a central web portal which would list the beneficiaries of funds - it would be managed only by the Commission. The portal would also eventually carry links to member state websites with information on recipients of funds under shared management, including farm funds.

So far, only 12 countries have fully or partially published the information, with Latvia expected to be the next to join the list. "European citizens have a right to know what we are spending their money on", EU farm commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said at a conference in Brussels last month on the initiative. Besides Germany, Ireland and Spain have also expressed reservations about the transparency initiative.

The German government is set to propose the threshold in an internal vote in Brussels, the Financial Times Deutschland reports, adding that the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia may also support the German stand. The Commission presented the European Transparency Initiative on 9 November 2005 and launched a debate on the disclosure of data on the recipients of various EU funds - notably the structural funds and farm money.

The formal consultation process on the initiative ends 31 August 2006 after which the Commission will consider what concrete measures it may be appropriate to take in order to enhance transparency in the EU.