Secrecy report? Sorry, it’s secret

Date: 03/10/1996

By Ole Ryborg

THE Council of Ministers has scored a classic own goal by refusing to give the public access to a report ... on public access to documents.

The 18-page study, obtained by European Voice, details the experience of EU governments over the past two years in implementing their policy of making internal Council papers more readily available to a wider audience.

The report is far from controversial and concentrates heavily on a statistical analysis of the fate of the various requests tabled by the public, rather than proposing any revolutionary changes in existing procedures.

Yet it has been classified as confidential at the insistence of France and the Netherlands.

French officials defended their government's decision to block publication of the report, insisting that its findings should only be released if they led to changes in the existing rules on access to documents.

But the 'confidential' tag slapped on the report is doubly embarrassing to governments.

Not only are they publicly committed to reducing the comprehension gap between EU institutions and the wider public, but the decision also appears to fly in the face of the overwhelming view emerging from the Intergovernmental Conference that the principles of openness and transparency should be specifically written into the revised Maastricht Treaty.

The report reveals that during 1994 and 1995, the Council of Ministers received 142 applications for access to 443 internal documents. It describes in some detail the difficulties encountered by the Council of Ministers' secretariat in handling the requests and applying the relatively new rules.

In its conclusions, the report sets out a number of areas where officials believe improvements could be made.

It notes, for example, that many applications are couched in vague terms or general language referring either to "all texts in connection with" or "all agendas for all working parties under title IV".

To make it easier to process such applications, the Council secretariat proposes establishing a computerised register of all internal documents.

It also recommends the introduction of a formal system for declassifying documents. While access could be legitimately denied under the exemption on "protection of the confidentiality of the Council's proceedings", the secretariat proposes that it should be possible for documentation denied on these grounds to be made available once the Council of Ministers has taken its decision on the issue involved.

The report also reveals the irritation felt by Council officials towards those suspected of demanding access to documents simply to test the system - one individual with a keen interest in justice and home affairs matters accounted for one-third of all the requests made during the two-year period under review.

The report hints at the possibility of erecting a new obstacle to applications thought to fall into this category, by making individuals justify why they are seeking access to particular documents.

A parallel exercise by the Commission showed that it received almost 500 requests during the first two years of applying its own code of conduct on access to documents. About a quarter were dismissed since the documents did not exist, had already been published or were the property of another institution, and a further 15% were rejected on grounds ranging from the need to defend the public interest to protection of the Union's financial affairs.