№106, The Black Box of European Legislation, The Motivation (or Lack of It) behind Transparency in EU Policymaking - Borońska-Hryniewiecka, Karolina (Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2015)
One of the political ambitions of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his first vice-president, Frans Timmermans, is to push for more openness in European Union policymaking. However, the improvements they propose are substantially undermined by opaque decision-making procedures and the lack of consistency in EU institutional culture. The open-governance drive is also stymied by fears among the Member States that too much disclosure might diminish effective policymaking there. Yet, if the EU does not understand that it needs to present a unified approach to transparency vis-à-vis its citizens, it will never evolve into a genuine political union