Can the right to know be put in the treaty?

Margot Wallström, the European commissioner in charge of communication, has not given up the battle to persuade EU member states to include in the reform treaty a reference to citizens’ rights to be informed and the EU institutions’ duty to provide information.

Wallström said that an explicit reference in the treaty would help the EU institutions to plan and fund a common communications programme more effectively.

"Ideally we would have in the treaty a rather general text mentioning the right of citizens to information and the institutions’ obligation to inform," Wallström told European Voice.

"Nothing in the treaty acknowledges the need for communication," she said, adding that this made it difficult for the Commission to implement a communication policy. "The UK and some other states with a more sceptical debate are always objecting…for them, everything we try to do is propaganda."

But Wallström conceded that it might be too late to insert a reference to communication in the new treaty. Negotiations on fine-tuning the treaty will start on 23 July and are expected to be concluded in October. They will be limited to implementing a mandate approved by EU leaders at the 21-23 June summit. The mandate contains no reference to communicating with citizens.

"It would be difficult to add it now…everybody would be hesitant to add new elements to the treaty, but I will do my best. I will make sure that all arguments will be presented to the member states in the IGC," Wallström said, referring to the intergovernmental conference at which member states’ representatives draft the treaty.

A diplomat involved in the negotiations said: "It is difficult to imagine that we will add this to the talks. If we do that, every member state is going to put on the table a new list of things they would like to see in the treaty and that will make talks impossible to conclude. We will stick to the mandate."

Many member states are expected to oppose a treaty clause on communication, which could bring them under renewed pressure to open up the workings of the EU’s institutions. Despite greater transparency having been introduced in the working of institutions in the past years, many Council of Ministers’ meetings, all European Council sessions and the European Commission’s weekly meetings still take place behind closed doors.

Some member states fear that on the basis of such a treaty clause they could be challenged at the European Court of Justice to open all Council meetings to the public or to publish documents classified as confidential.

"I don’t know whether it scares them [the member states] but communication has not been a very important issue for them and, in any case, it’s sensitive for member states," said Wallström.

The commissioner added that member states and the EU institutions could only gain from such a treaty clause, if drafted "in a clever way, stressing the right for citizens, presenting it in a positive way".

Wallström said that she was pleased that in the conclusions of the June summit government leaders had emphasised "the crucial importance of reinforcing communication with the European citizens, providing full and comprehensive information on the European Union and involving them in a permanent dialogue".

Although summit conclusions are not legally binding, the commissioner said that this was "a very good platform for communication".

Wallström said that if the attempt to include a communication clause in the treaty failed, the Commission would "make use of existing powers in the treaty for coming up with a community programme on communication".

She said that communication policy should follow the same approach as that for energy. Although there is no clear legal basis in current treaties for an EU energy policy, member states agreed to develop such a policy.

"We need to put together a community programme using the same approach as for energy. There is no legal basis for energy, but member states said ‘let’s agree on political priorities’."

She said that a communication policy could still be developed if all the Union’s institutions supported it.

"When we approve the annual policy strategy, for instance, why should we not adopt a communication strategy to go with it?"

Wallström added that for communication with citizens to be effective, a Community-wide communication programme was necessary, rather than separate programmes for each EU institution.

"We need a Community programme, we need to agree as the EU what our messages for citizens are, plan it together, put resources together, to maximise the use of resources. The idea is to work together this time, with other institutions hand-in-hand."

Wallström said that after the summer break she would put forward a strategy for communicating the new treaty. "We will involve the other institutions as well as the national parliaments, as much as we can."

She said that national parliaments would be involved "mainly through political parties, but also by involving the Commission’s delegations in the member states".

She admitted that the task of communicating the new treaty would be difficult as the document would be "ugly". "That’s why I insisted with the Portuguese presidency that the consolidated text must be as understandable as possible."

Her strategy on the reform treaty will be "a Plan D+", she said, referring to the ‘Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue, Debate’, launched in 2005, which aimed at putting in place a framework for debate on Europe’s future following the rejection of the EU constitution by French and Dutch citizens.

Wallström said that the EU institutions were "slowly making progress" on communication, but that changing an "old-fashioned culture" was difficult.

"We need to write things that are understandable for the people. In the past, the feeling was that the more complicated a document was, the better it was."

One of the important innovations, she stressed, was the introduction of "people’s summaries" of EU proposals or decisions.

"People’s summaries are very important, so that the aunt in Bucharest understands what it is about," she said, adding that the Commission had already started making such summaries, but that they should become a rule in the future.

Wallström insisted that a communication policy could not be successful if the EU institutions were not allowed to hire specialists and did not receive the necessary funding.

"We are supposed to be professional but we are amateurish. We have good people working for us, for instance in audiovisual. And we have autodidact Commission officials, who, although they are not experts [in communication] are learning."

She said that the Commission had far fewer people working on communication than the Swedish furniture maker Ikea and added that resources were "insufficient".

Wallström said that she hoped that a recent Commission decision, encouraging the institutions’ officials to "act as ambassadors" by talking to journalists or the public, would help the Commission better explain its work. She admitted that the former rules, which prevented officials from engaging with the press or the public and allowed only spokespeople to talk to the media, presented "a dreadful image".

Margot Wallström, the European commissioner in charge of communication, has not given up the battle to persuade EU member states to include in the reform treaty a reference to citizens’ rights to be informed and the EU institutions’ duty to provide information.