More mailbag secrets could soon be revealed

Date: 03/02/2000

By Gareth Harding

LETTERS sent by European Commissioners and other top officials may soon be made public on the Internet if President Romano Prodi's pledge to open up his mailbag works in practice.

The Commission president promised last week that he would publish a register of both his incoming and outgoing mail on the web by the end of March, so that the public could see who had written to him, on what subject and when. All letters sent by Prodi will carry a warning to the recipient that future correspondence may be made available to the public.

The move, which honours a promise made to MEPs in September, will give citizens access to copies of all the president's correspondence excluding those which fall under specific exceptions.

Officials say that if the initiative proves successful, it could be extended to other Commissioners and director-generals. But they acknowledge that this would not be straightforward in sensitive areas such as competition policy, where exemptions to the open-access rule would prevent the distribution of some documents to protect companies' commercial secrets.

The decision on whether to extend the scheme will also depend on an in-depth study of rules in member states which the Commission aims to carry out in the coming months.

Unveiling details of a planned new law on public access to EU documents last week, Prodi said transparency was "vital for the democratic health and accountability of the European Union", adding that: "wherever possible, the new Commission intends to match the best European practice".

However, freedom-of-information campaigners remain distinctly unimpressed by the proposal, which would apply to documents held by all three EU law-making institutions but exclude internal Commission papers from the public's eyes.

EU Ombudsman Jacob Söderman said the draft regulation appeared "to consist mainly of a long list of possible reasons to deny access to documents". He said expectations had been raised by the Amsterdam Treaty's provisions on openness but warned that the proposals "could be a step back".

Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala, leader of the Green Group in the European Parliament, said the planned measures would "worsen the existing situation, since the catch-all list of exceptions could include each and every document".

Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström also weighed into the debate this week, saying she was "not fully content" with the Commission's proposal.