Press Release: First success for European Transparency Initiative – Annual disclosure of recipient data for EU funds

With the adoption of the revised Financial Regulation the EU has committed itself to full transparency about who receives monies from the EU budget. There will be annual ex-post publication of beneficiaries of money received from the Structural Funds as from 2008 and of money received under the Common Agricultural Policy as of 2009. The Commission has itself already started publishing information on beneficiaries under the programmes it manages directly. With this, the European Commission's ambitious Transparency Initiative launched at the end of 2005 has achieved its first objective. The European Parliament's Budgetary Control Committee is debating a working document on the Transparency Initiative on 20 December 2006.