EU: Statewatch applications split the European Council (feature)
01 May 1996
Three appeals made by Statewatch editor Tony Bunyan made against the refusal to release documents concerning the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers has produced major divisions in the European Council over the issue of secrecy.
The first case, reported in Statewatch vol 6 no 2, March-April 1996, saw three governments - Denmark, Sweden and Finland - making public Declarations in support of greater openness and two governments voting against the proposed reply - Denmark and the UK. The second, reported below, similarly saw Denmark and Sweden again calling for more documents to be released. Four countries voted against the proposed response by the Council to an appeal - Denmark, Sweden, France and Portugal. The French vote against the proposed response cannot be taken as one of support for openness in the light of its later attack on ... but rather that too many documents were being released.
The third case on the Minutes of the K4 Committee, reported on page 1 and below, saw seven countries lining up in favour of greater openness and against a obviously absurd interpretation of the rules of access to documents.
The K4 case
On 27 February 1996 a request was made for copies of the minutes of the K4 Committee covering 14 meetings between 3/4 February 1994 and 12/13 September 1995. On 3 April the Council General Secretariat replied by sending copies of 5 sets of Minutes. The letter stated that, under Article 3(2) of the Decision of 31.12.93:
"Your request in this regard is a repeat application which relates as well to a very large number of documents. The General Secretariat has however found a fair solution..."
On 17 April Tony Bunyan wrote back to the Council saying "I was a little surprised" by the reply and that his request was not a "repeat application" as "No previous application has requested the information asked for in my letter of 27 February." Nor was the request within the Council Decision's definition of "very large documents" - which clearly referred to documents with a large number of pages - not to "a very large NUMBER of documents" as stated by the Council. As neither of these grounds held the Council could not apply a "fair solution" by only providing 5 of the 14 documents requested. The letter to the General Secretariat asked them to reconsider its response or "reluctantly, I wish to make a confirmatory application..."
Mr Bersani, the Italian Minister for Industry and Craft Trades, replied for the Council on 23 May 1996 saying that the Council of the European Union endorsed the General Secretariat's response and:
"is of the opinion that your request is a repeat application and that a fair solution was given to your request... your request for access to the Minutes of meetings of the K.4 Committee between 3 November 1993 until 12 and 13 September 1995 constitutes a repeat application similar to those which you have presented in the past."
The request for the Minutes of the K4 Committee was argued to be "similar" to a previous request for copies of the Agendas. The letter concedes the issue of a "very large number of documents" not being the same as "very large documents".
What the letter did not say was that the Council had split down the middle and only voted, both in COREPER and at the Industry Council of Ministers on 20 May, by 8 votes to 7 in favour of this response. The Danish and Swedish delegation made a public Declaration fully supporting Tony Bunyan's case that he had not made a repeat application and that "repeat" meant the same applicant applying for the same document on different occasions. The Finnish delegation made a similar declaration.
The extraordinary public Declaration from France and Belgium is reproduced in the box opposite. It is clearly referring not just to this specific application but to "applications" in the plural and marks out their strong opposition to ending the secrecy surrounding the meetings of the Justice and Home Affai