WWF wins judgement on access to information

Date: 06/03/1997

By Michael Mann

A LANDMARK judgement by the Court of First Instance looks set to force the European Commission to open up its internal workings to greater public scrutiny.

The successful challenge was brought by the environmental lobby group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which claimed the Commission was breaking its own rules by interpreting a 1994 code of conduct on access to information too narrowly.

The case concerned the refusal by Commission Secretary-General David Williamson to make documents relating to the award of structural fund money to a planned visitor centre at the Irish beauty spot of Mullaghmore available to WWF and the Irish non-governmental organisation An Taisce.

The groups claimed they needed the papers to mount a legal challenge to prevent EU funds being spent on a project which they believed would harm the local environment. The Court rejected most of the Commission's arguments for refusing to hand them over.

“This decision is highly significant, giving the code a legal status it did not have before. The Commission will now have to give detailed reasons if it refuses people access to documents and the exemptions built into the code will have to be interpreted narrowly,” claimed WWF's Tony Long.

The WWF victory follows a similar ruling on a case brought by The Guardian newspaper against the Council of Ministers in 1995.

WWF's lawyer Georg Berrisch stressed it was not yet clear how much practical difference the ruling would make to the Commission's approach to transparency. But he claimed that “citizens who apply for papers will no longer get flat refusals from the Commission”, adding that further cases awaiting judgement would help to clarify the situation.

Although the Court did not accept most of the Commission's defence arguments, it ruled that access could be legitimately denied to documents referring to infringement proceedings brought against member states under Article 169 of the EU treaty.

Commission officials said the institution's legal experts were still considering the implications of the decision, and did not exclude an appeal.

Long accused the Commission of hypocrisy, claiming its refusal to respect the principle of transparency ran directly counter to its submission on the subject to the Intergovernmental Conference.

“Although significant, this judgement is not enough. We want the treaty itself to grant such rights to the citizen. We need a much greater undertaking to openness in the text itself,” he said.