Council to open up for secrecy probe

Date: 12/06/1997

By Leyla Linton

EU AMBASSADORS are expected to perform a U-turn this week by agreeing to cooperate with the European Ombudsman's investigation into a complaint against the Council of Ministers.

Government representatives are today (12 June) putting the finishing touches to a conciliatory and expansive reply to Jacob Soederman, which will say that they are now prepared to explain to the Ombudsman why they refused to give a British journalist access to documents relating to justice and home affairs issues.

The letter is in complete contrast to the refusal by EU foreign ministers in March to give Soederman any information at all relating to the complaint because they said that it was outside his competence.

The Council told Soederman he had no authority to investigate the case because justice and home affairs were dealt with on an intergovernmental basis and were thus outside his remit.

But a minority of six governments - Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden - were unhappy with the majority's position and published a declaration to the contrary.

Soederman maintained the Council was wrong and said he would fight the case “to the bitter end”, arguing that it was one of the institutions he had a mandate to supervise and that it was not for them to decide otherwise.

The Ombudsman has a specific brief to deal with maladministration of Union institutions. In his reply to the Council, Soederman said that public access to documents was a matter of EU law, reminded it that the European Court of Justice was the highest authority on the matter and gave ministers until the end of May to reconsider their position.

He indicated that if they refused to cooperate, he would take the matter to the European Parliament, which could then refer the case to the ECJ.

Soederman has been waiting for the Council to give a satisfactory explanation of its actions since January, after ruling last year that the six complaints lodged by Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch, a civil liberties magazine, were admissible.

The complaints centred on the Council's decision to hand over less than half of the minutes of the K4 committee on justice and home affairs requested by Bunyan; three instances where the Council appeared not to have conserved historical documents; and its failure to publish decisions taken under the so-called 'third' pillar.

The latest draft of the revised Maastricht Treaty to be discussed by heads of state at the EU summit in Amsterdam next week would clarify the Ombudsman's powers to investigate activities covered by the treaty's intergovernmental pillars - relating to the Union's common foreign and security policy and justice and home affairs.

Soederman has called for treaty changes to establish a right of access for citizens to documents held by EU institutions.