Parliament bids to take heat out of row over openness

Date: 16/03/2000

By Gareth Harding

THE European Parliament has stepped in to try to defuse a furious row between European Commission President Romano Prodi and EU Ombudsman Jacob Söderman over planned new laws on the public's right to gain access to Union documents.

Both men have been asked to appear separately before the assembly's ruling body within the next two weeks to explain their cases and answer MEPs' questions on the issue.

The move follows an increasingly bitter public slanging match between the duo which began when Söderman launched a fierce attack on the Commission's proposal in a newspaper article, arguing that Prodi's recommendations on transparency made the Santer Commission - which ended under a cloud of scandals - "look good".

Söderman said the draft proposal contained a list of exemptions from the right to obtain EU documents "without precedent in the modern world" and attacked an unnamed Commissioner for referring to the desire for more openness in the Union as an example of "Protestant puritanism".

Prodi retaliated by writing to Parliament President Nicole Fontaine describing the Ombudsman's comments as "polemical and extreme". He added that it was "unexpected, and in my opinion extremely damaging to the normal functioning of the institutions, to receive these emotional and seriously misleading comments through the press" - although, days later, he too wrote a newspaper article, claiming Söderman's criticisms were "wide of the mark" and insisting that withholding documents would be "very much the exception" when the proposed new law came into effect.

In his letter to Fontaine, Prodi also expressed the "worry" of the entire college of Commissioners that Söderman was abusing the position entrusted to him.

The Ombudsman, who is responsible for investigating allegations of maladministration in the EU institutions, has now written back to Fontaine vigorously defending his stance.

Söderman insists that he was "right to conduct the debate in public", because the Commission did not "fulfil its promise" to publish a consultation paper before finalising its draft regulation. He also argues that the debate has "been to the benefit of Europe's citizens, not least because it has given Prodi the opportunity to promise that transparency will become a byword of his mandate as president".

Söderman has also written to Prodi outlining the main changes he believes should be made to the proposal. In a withering attack on the plan, he says that if it is left unchanged, "citizens would not so much enjoy rights as be dependent on the goodwill of officials" and calls for the planned list of exemptions from the new rules to be scaled back.

The issue has sparked arguments within the Parliament itself, after Fontaine reportedly sided with the Commission president during the meeting of group leaders last week.

Although the assembly's leading politicians agreed to invite both men to address them later this month, Liberal chief Pat Cox and most others insisted there was no question of bringing Söderman to book for his remarks. Rather, said Cox, the invitation was intended to give the Ombudsman the chance to explain his concerns about transparency. "There is nothing in Söderman's article which shocks or scandalises in any way and he should not be criticised for being a self-publicist," he told European Voice.

As the row continues, criticism of the draft regulation unveiled last month continues unabated. Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde of the Europe of Democracies and Differences (EDD) group described the Commission's proposals as a "clear step backwards" compared to the current rules and said "the only people to benefit from transparency under the new rules will be future historians".

The proposals have already been savaged by journalists, civil liberties groups and freedom of information campaigners. MEPs are expected to push for a stronger text when they discuss the plan later this year.

The European Parliament has stepped in to try to defuse a furious row between European Commission President Romano prodi and EU Ombudsman Jacob Söderman over planned new laws on the public's right to gain access to Union documents.