EU: A step towards more openness? (feature)
01 March 1998
At its meeting on 19 March in Brussels the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers (JHA Council) agreed two reports on openness and transparency. The first covers justice and home affairs, the second, making available a public register of documents covering all areas of the Council of Ministers's work.
The Declaration on "Openness and transparency in justice and home affairs" included the following:
a) making available to the public the calendar of the K4 Committee and other JHA working groups;
Readers will recall that Statewatch was refused access to the calendar of meetings and this "right" was only established after Statewatch lodged (in 1996), and won, a complaint taken up by the European Ombudsman (see Statewatch, XXXX).
b) increasing the number of press briefings;
c) making available a progress report towards the end of each Presidency;
d) having an open debate during each Presidency;
It has been agreed that, under the UK Presidency, this will be "debate" on "organised crime" at the May JHA Council.
e) making available to the public proposals in the field of JHA at the same time as they are made available to the European Parliament;
This would advance the commitment to do this included in the Amsterdam Treaty (which has yet to be ratified). It should be noted that "proposals" only comprise a fraction of the decisions and reports adopted by the JHA Council, the K4 Committee and its working parties.
f) making available a list of measures adopted by the Council in the field of JHA.
This too was the subject of a complaint taken to the European Ombudsman by Statewatch in 1996.
The decision on the "Public register of Council documents" is printed in full in box A. Five comments need to be made on the proposals.
First, the register is to include "unclassified Council documents". As can be seen from the classification code reproduced in Box B the third classification category "RESTREINT" is defined as documents containing information:
"unauthorised disclosure of which would be inappropriate or premature"
While is true that the majority of documents are classified as "LIMITE" (which is not subject to "special protection" and is not a "security classification") a number of documents which should be in the public domain as classified as "RESTREINT". The fact that disclosure could be "inappropriate" or "premature" suggests this category is used to keep secret documents governments might find embarassing. There could also be a temptation to classify a document as "RESTREINT" rather than "LIMITE" in order to ensure it is not available.
Second, there is no procedure for reviewing the classification of documents either in the 1995 Decision on classified information nor in the 19 March Decision on the public register.
Third, it is expected that the public register will go online at the end of this year or the beginning of 1999. But it will not be retrospective, that is to say it will not cover the hundreds of documents discussed prior to the launch of the register.
Fourth, the statement in point 5 that the "implementation" of the register "will not require any additional budget provision or additional staff" is correct as the Council will now have tow separate internal registers, one to be made public, and one to be kept secret. However, the demand created by the publication of the register will inevitably led to a major increase in the number of requests for documents, and in the number of appeals when applicants are refused access.
Finally, there is the statement in point 2 that "to preserve the Council's right not to communicate a document, the register will not display the content of the documents". This places applicants in the same situation Statewatch and others have been in for years namely the struggle to get access to documents. This is a lengthy, time-consuming, and often frustrating job. For example, the following response has just been received fro