European Union: Meetings of EU ministers will be open to television cameras in the future after UK prime minister Tony Blair yesterday withdrew British objections to the move.
The televising of meetings of the EU Council of Ministers is part of a new package of measures aimed at making EU decision-making more open and visible to its citizens.
Other measures include the holding of public debates on key issues.
Mr Blair had proposed a transparency programme during its EU presidency last year.
However, British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett said on the eve of the summit that the plan to televise ministerial negotiations threatened to result in important bargaining taking place in corridors and by phone, rather than in meetings in front of cameras.
The UK accepted a compromise yesterday whereby the new system will be reviewed after six months to see how it is working. The president of the European Council, Wolfgang Schüssel, yesterday thanked the UK for withdrawing its objections and said the televising would begin.
"We are trying this out, basically," he said.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, told reporters yesterday that the Republic was a "very strong supporter of making EU decision-making much closer to the people and more public".
The European Council also agreed yesterday to a commission proposal to make all new proposals and consultation papers directly available to national parliaments.
The commission will then be obliged to consider comments by national parliaments in a move to give them more of an input into EU decision-making.
Leaders also signed up to a deal that boosts the power of the European Parliament to scrutinise regulations implemented by the EU.
In practice, most EU regulation is not enacted as legislation by the council and the parliament, but as implementation measures by the commission.
These regulations can be adopted under a procedure whereby the council confers executive powers on the commission. Implementation committees, composed of experts from EU states, must give its opinion and approve the regulations.
This process, which is known as "commitology", effectively excluded the parliament from scrutinising regulatory decisions.
However, under a new arrangement agreed yesterday, MEPs will be allowed to scrutinise the proposed adoption of regulations in areas of policy where it enjoys co-decision, such as the environment.