Commission bids to lift EU veil of secrecy

Date: 02/12/1999

By Gareth Harding

THE European Commission is putting the finishing touches to a planned new law on public access to information which could usher in a new era of openness in the EU institutions.

Under the proposal, the Union's three law-making bodies - the Commission, Council of Ministers and European Parliament - would be legally obliged to draw up a public register of documents. Their ability to refuse to hand over texts on the grounds that they were confidential would also be severely limited.

The Commission's push for glasnost in the Union comes hot on the heels of a decision by EU ambassadors to follow the precedent set by the Finnish presidency by continuing to publish agendas for Council of Ministers' meetings on the Internet. Foreign ministers are set to confirm the move next Monday (6 December).

The Commission has been working on its transparency proposals since the Amsterdam Treaty committed the Union to take its decisions as openly as possible. However, an earlier draft which was due to be unveiled in May fell victim to the legislative paralysis in the institution following the resignation of President Jacques Santer and his team. The Commission was also forced back to the drawing board after its original proposals were savaged by MEPs and freedom-of-information campaigners.

Much to the annoyance of Finland, which has made prising open the EU's arcane decision-making procedures one of the priorities of its six-month presidency, the proposals have been further delayed by internal arguments within the Commission.

The institution's powerful legal service is opposed to many of the measures drawn up by its secretariat-general, and is fighting a rearguard action against plans to make all documents - including those submitted by outside bodies - available to the public unless they are deemed to be confidential.

The Commission's draft proposals, which require the approval of MEPs and EU governments to become law, lay down a broad definition of the sort of documents to be covered by new legislation and tight rules to limit the right of officials to deny the public access to texts.

In future, only a handful of categories of documents - such as personnel files, internal administrative documents and papers which could endanger public safety - would be barred from public scrutiny.

In addition, the Commission will argue that EU bodies should release edited versions of documents containing secret information instead of refusing to publish them at all on grounds of confidentiality. Earlier this year, Finnish Green MEP Heidi Hautala won a landmark victory in the European Court of Justice after she was refused access to a partially confidential paper.

The Council of Ministers is also expected to agree next week to include references to secret texts in its public register of documents, as well as continuing Helsinki's practice of publishing all Council agendas on the Internet. Only Spain is opposed to the move, arguing that governments should wait to see the Commission's proposals before taking action.

The push for greater transparency has been warmly welcomed by campaigners for a more open Union. EU Ombudsman Jacob Söderman told European Voice that a culture of openness was "the cheapest way to prevent fraud and corruption in the EU".

Commenting on the arguments within the Commission over just how far the new legislation should go, Söderman said "the legal service is usually against anything which is good for the citizens" and called for the list of exceptions to the openness rule to be "short and precise".

The European Commission is putting the finishing touches to a planned new law on public access to information which could usher in a new era of openness in the EU institutions.