"EU Website must be made more user friendly" says London MEP

1.07.43pm GMT Fri 30th Sep 2005

Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford was unimpressed with the British Presidency response to her request for the EU Council of Ministers' website to be made more user-friendly to people searching for documents.

She complained that despite the EU's freedom of information rules and rhetoric about more openness and transparency, access was difficult since there was no way to locate all papers relevant to a particular meeting or track the evolution of debate on a subject. This is possible on the European Parliament website.

Giving as an example the topical matter of data retention, she noted that if those words are typed into the 'subject' box on the Council website, no documents come up.

"It's as if Charles Clarke's frenzy of activity on this topic was a mirage!" she commented.

You have to know to use the 'words in title' box to find 45 documents, but even then there is no map of how they fit together.

Europe minister Douglas Alexander responded that 300,000 users in 2004 represented a 63% increase on 2003 but that "in order to improve the quality of the register, the Council will study the technical feasibility of performing an automatic search via interactive agendas."

Sarah Ludford commented:

"He doesn't say how many of those 300 000 retired frustrated and empty-handed from the search. And while he ticked me off for making him repeat his pledge of a rethink, it was such obscure 'EU-meets-New Labour-speak' that I plead mental battery!"