Strasbourg, 08/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - In a letter addressed to President Romano Prodi, the European Ombudsman, Jacob Söderman, has complained of the way in which rules on personal data protection are misused to obstruct transparency in public activities. He has requested that the occasion is seized in order to revise the 1995 Direction on data protection by introducing provisions guaranteeing that these rules cannot obstruct transparency and the right to official documents.
The Ombudsman believes, "There is no fundamental right to participate anonymously in public activities" and provides four examples where the rules on personal data protection are misused: 1) the difficulties encountered by the European Parliament for publishing the lists assistants to MEPs; 2) the refusal of the EP to disseminate the names of those succeeding in recruitment competitions in a particular institution although the European Commission had decided in 1997 to publish the names in its own competitions; 3) the refusal of the Commission to provide information on the identity of people who provide information during a procedure of irregularity (Art.226) involving the United Kingdom - according to the Ombudsman, "the Commission appears to have used this complaint as a test case, using data protection as a new way of protecting secret decision-making;" 4) the request from a newspaper for public access to a register of authorisations on the external activities of European Commission officials, to which the Commission responded by providing the register but with the names of the officials removed.