Brussels, 19/06/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's Committee on citizens' rights and liberties held a public hearing on 12 June on the subject of "transparency of and access to EU documents: is it working?", in view of the report by Michael Cashman (Labour, UK) on access to documents of the European Parliament, Council and Commission, applying the 1049 regulation. Since 3 December 2001, this regulation has replaced the rules of access previously applied by the three institutions. Now is the time for initial evaluations, especially as the Convention is preparing new provisions on transparency, and the institutions are attempting to reach an inter-institutional agreement on how to improve this regulation.
The European Parliament's register was consulted 26,000 times in 2002, and 637 requests for documents were made of it, of which only 1% was rejected. "We remain the most open and transparent institution", said Harald Roemer of the secretariat general of the European Parliament. The European Commission registered 24,000 requests, a third of which were rejected, prompting Dutch Christian Democrat Hanja Maij-Weggen to comment that "the more opportunities the citizens have, the more they take advantage of them, and the more the Commission struggles". 900,000 Council documents were consulted, and only 10,000 were requested, of which 10% were rejected. According to Ms Maij-Weggen, "one problem is that the Council differentiates between documents submitted by itself and those submitted by a Member State". In the latter case, access to documents depends on the legislation of the State in question. A possible outcome is that German citizens, for example, may have access to Swedish documents (northern European countries being much more transparent in terms of access to documents), but not to documents from their own country on the same subject. "Progress has been made, but we hope to bring in a real culture of openness where the instinct to send is greater than the instinct to refuse. This should feature in the future Constitution", she added. She also commented that no institutional documents on state aid or comitology are ever made public.
Italian Radical Maurizio Turco said: "the only entities which meet in secret are the European Council and the North Korean parliamentary body". Mr Turco brought a case against the Council to the Court of First Instance about the JHA Council session which on 15 and 16 October 2002 refused to make five documents, including a legal opinion, available. The Council systematically believes that legal opinions are not subject to the rules on access to documents, protested Mr Turco. Parliament, he said, may also bring proceedings against the Commission, which apparently bowed to pressure from Spain and Portugal, allowing them to grant tax relief to the Catholic Church.
It is worth noting that journalists are not big requesters of documents. There are many reasons for this, explains Björn Mansson, of the European Federation of Journalists, who cites firstly the fact that lead times for answers are too long. Journalists are also aware that they will not get sensitive documents, such as ones on foreign affairs, which are precisely the ones they are interested in. Documents are also published too late, after the decision has been made: publishing them beforehand would obviously strengthen public debate.