Turning a trickle into a torrent

Date: 09/05/1996

EU staff are being urged to embrace a new creed of openness. But, as Rory Watson reports, the habits of a lifetime are not so easily broken.

SPARE a thought for European Union officials.

For decades they have been discouraged from discussing their work with the public at large. Indeed, their internal staff regulations formally forbid such openness.

Now wider political interests are dictating they be more communicative about their activities. The new creed of transparency is designed to make the electorate feel involved in EU activities. But the habits of a lifetime cannot be changed overnight. Nor is there yet general agreement on how the principle should be applied in practice.

“The basic problem is that there is a lot of confusion among Commission staff. From giving out nothing at all, they are all of a sudden being told to be more open. But they have no tradition of dealing with the general public. We need to make them more aware. If we do not start from the inside, we will have no chance of communicating with the outside,” admits one senior official championing the cause of greater transparency.

Some officials are, however, positively hostile to change. They have become used to operating away from the public gaze within a hierarchical system where responsibility and decisions reside at the top. Unwilling or unable to change their working habits, they take refuge in Article 17 of the staff regulations, which stipulates that they “shall not in any manner whatsoever disclose to any unauthorised person any document or information not already made public”.

Supporters of more openness believe such views are shared by only a minority. They are also convinced they are unhealthy.

“I feel people are applying a form of self-restriction. The system does not give them responsibility for what they are doing. We need a system where responsibility is shared throughout the structure,” explains one official.

Pressure for openness is coming from various quarters. EU governments chant it like a mantra, freedom of information campaigners are using the courts to prise open hitherto closed doors and the arrival of the new member states - especially Sweden - has introduced a more extrovert culture to challenge the traditional EU way of doing things.

“We have a right to talk to the media and to leak information. It is considered a right and a way of preventing corruption. We have had 250 years to develop our perception of the role of civil servants and the view that they are part of society and have a duty to serve. It will take time to create a communication culture in the EU institutions,” says a senior Swedish official.

Rewriting the staff regulations is an exercise few expect to be undertaken in the short term, given the political and legal complexities involved. But there are signs that they are being applied with a degree of flexibility.

“Basically, the feeling appears to be that no one minds leaking as long as the information is not used against the interests of the Union,” confirms one senior EU official.

The Commission has already produced - and is considering updating - an internal brochure setting out guidelines for its staff on how to handle public requests for access to documents. But supporters of change insist specific training should be given, and more staff and resources made available to handle public requests for documents.

The Commission's first two years' experience of applying its code of conduct on access to documentation shows that it received almost 500 requests for internal papers, with the majority of applications coming from lawyers, lobbyists, industrialists and academics.

Almost a quarter of these requests concerned documents which did not exist, had already been published or belonged to other institutions and were thus dismissed. Another 15&percent; were rejected by the Commission on grounds ranging from defence of the public interest to the need to protect the Union's financial interests.

A similar assessment is being carried out by the Council of Ministers. It is expected to be published next month now that the European Court of Justice has rejected a challenge by the Netherlands to the very basis of the code of conduct.

Over the same period, the Council received about 140 requests - covering some 450 separate documents - of which it agreed to some 60&percent;. One-third of all the requests were tabled by Tony Bunyan, the editor of Statewatch and a specialist in civil liberties.

But even when internal papers are handed over, the Council comes in for criticism.

Peter Sluiter, coordinator of the European Round Table of Associations and Foundations (ERAS), is analysing the reception non-governmental organisations receive when requesting documents from the EU's institutions.

“The most interesting fact that is emerging is that people I talk to do not use the official code of conduct and are not even aware of it. They rely on the informal contacts they have developed themselves,” he says.

Sluiter himself has had mixed results with the new system. He approached both the Commission and the Council of Ministers seeking internal papers on the EU/US Euratom agreement. Although he was initially refused access to them by the Council, he appealed and received the documents at the second time of asking.

“To my surprise, I got almost all the documents I had asked for. But by then it was too late. My main complaint is that I eventually received papers they had originally said were politically too sensitive. Why did I not get them at the outset? Either it was deliberate or else it was very sloppy,” he complains.

The Council is also facing a further legal challenge in a case being brought by Journalisten, the in-house magazine for Swedish journalists. It has complained about the Council's failure to hand over a score of documents on Europol, the intelligence gathering agency.

The case highlights different national traditions on access to documents and the impact these can have when they involve EU policies. The Council has released just four documents, compared with the 18 handed over by the Swedish authorities when faced with the same request.

Individual journalists are testing the system. The Danes, who share Sweden's more open traditions, have provided 18 of the papers involved and the Finns agreed to release seven. But applications by German, Dutch and Irish reporters to their governments were all deflected with the advice that the Council of Ministers should be approached.

Ending the confusion is one of the tasks facing the Intergovernmental Conference.

Indeed, there are signs that the EU institutions themselves are waiting for confirmation of the degree of political commitment to transparency before trying to educate their staff to the new ways.

IGC group chairman Silvio Fagiolo is convinced that commitment already exists. “I think a consensus has emerged on the need to emphasise this aspect more. We are talking of citizens' rights and of bringing the Union closer to citizens. The idea exists of a specific text in the treaty on transparency,” he has said.

This would cover access to documents and introduce greater clarity into EU decision-making procedures. German Christian Democrat MEP Elmar Brok - one of the European Parliament's two IGC observers - believes it would also include a requirement for details of the way governments vote in the Council to be published as a matter of course.

But there is little support for opening up ministerial meetings to the public gaze when legislation is being debated. Opponents argue it would merely move the real haggling from meeting rooms into corridors, with the danger that some smaller countries would be excluded from the process.

Indeed, the jury is still out on the wisdom of the current practice of televising some ministerial debates. Critics point to low media and public interest in set-piece speeches, but supporters insist that the device is a useful tool in demystifying the Union.

The debate still has some way to run and challengers of the status quo want to broaden the argument. “Access to documents is just passive openness. The only ones benefiting from this are academics, lawyers and lobbyists, not the general public. Much more should be done to promote openness. It is not just a question of picking out certain papers,” explains one official.