The Commission has expressed a favourable judgement on the reform of governance three years after the White Paper of 2001. The efforts undertaken to “make the policies of the Union more effective and to bring citizens closer to government” have been “positive”, says a report signed by the Prodi Executive and issued in Brussels in recent days, following a wide-ranging debate that involved the other institutions, member states and a sample of EU citizens. According to the document, “almost all the actions announced in 2001 have been realized or are in the course of being realized”. The spheres analysed in the report include: the “improvement of legislative activity”, the participation of civil society in the process of European integration, the “updating and simplification of Community acquis“, the “improvement in the application of EU law”, and the “regional and local dimension of the Union”. According to the Commission’s experts, “some ideas and recommendations expressed in the White Paper, such as participative democracy, dialogue with the regions and cities and administrative cooperation between member states, have been finally recognized by the Constitutional Treaty approved in June this year”. The report will now be evaluated by the European Parliament and Council, as well as by the advisory Committees, and published on the website dedicated to governance in the Union.
