EU institutions struggle to adapt openness principle

Concerns over delays in modernising freedom of information rights.

Advocates of a more open EU are concerned not only over the role of lobbyists, but also over delays in modernising freedom of information rights. 

New rules on access to documents – designed to make it easier for citizens to see more EU reports and proposals – are under discussion in the European Parliament. A December resolution demanded that the EU’s 2001 legislation be “urgently updated” to reflect the transparency requirements set out in the Lisbon treaty,

Michael Cashman, a UK centre-left MEP, and Anneli Jäätteenmäki, a Finnish Liberal MEP, are hoping to get proposals through the constitutional affairs and civil liberties committees by January.

Stalled proposal

Cashman, who sits on the civil liberties committee, has had difficulty in getting a first-reading committee vote on his proposal. It has been stalled since May by opposition from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), whose members back anxieties expressed by the UK and Germany over jeopardising sensitive data and information held and shared by member states.

But there is broad support in the Parliament for wider access. In March 2009, the Parliament held up its approval of a Commission proposal which Cashman and others, including Nikoforos Diamandouros, the European Ombudsman, slammed as “a step backward” for transparency.

Current rules allow only limited access to documents, and only to documents from the European Commission, the Parliament and the Council of Ministers. Jäätteenmäki said that they need to be expanded to cover all institutions, including the European Council, Europol, the European Central Bank and agencies. In addition, definitions vary on what constitutes a document. The Commission files only official documents on a public register, for instance. Drafts, memoranda or legal opinions are not disclosed, and officials argue that these should remain confidential because they are not a formal part of the decision-making process.

Cashman’s report urges bringing preliminary drafts, studies, and other preparatory legislative texts into the public domain, via a single “user-friendly” website. He is also seeking a standardised classification system of internal docu-ments, such as ‘EU top secret’, ‘EU secret’, ‘EU confidential’, or ‘EU re-stricted’, and for Parliamentary access to classified documents held by the Council. “It is my intention…to protect the rights enshrined in the current regulation and to go further,” Cashman said.

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