EU: EC to drop secrecy law
01 January 1993
The European Commission is to drop its proposal to introduce a UK-style secrecy law in the EC (reported in May by Statewatch, see vol 2 nos 3 & 4). This emerged after the Edinburgh EC Summit in December when 21 proposals were listed as being amended, withdrawn or being considered for withdrawal under the 'subsidiarity' clause. The secrecy law was listed as one the Commission would consider withdrawing Statewatch understands that it is now to be dropped.
The proposal called for the classification of documents whose disclosure would be "detrimental to the essential interests of the Community and member state", security gradings and sanctions against disclosure. The Commission put forward the proposal in February 1992. In May the International Federation of Journalists in Brussels, the European Federation of Trade Unions and Article 19 expressed their opposition to the proposal.
In the European Parliament (EP) the rapporteur in its Legal Affairs Committee on the proposal, Alex Falconer MEP, opposed the measure. The Committee sent a letter to the Commission asking why it had been sent to the parliament under the "consultation" rather than the "co-operation" procedure (the latter allow the parliament two chances to comment, the former just one). Officials from the Commission defended the proposal at the meeting of the EP's Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs Committee in September. However, the Civil Liberties Committee rapporteur on the issue, Mr Jarzembowski MEP, called for substantial amendments or the withdrawal of the proposal.
Although it would have been consulted over the original proposal the UK government later came out against it because it was not sure whether this was "the best means of implementing such procedures". This suggested that they would favour an inter- governmental agreement between the 12 EC states rather than a formal directive from the Commission on which the EP has to be involved. The proposal has been withdrawn under the heading of subsidiarity (meaning matters best left to member states rather than the Commission) which suggests it may surface again, though not during the Danish Presidency because they opposed the measure. If it does reappear it will probably be as an inter- governmental convention prepared and agreed in secret by governments before asking national parliaments to ratify it.