Too much information creates confusion
01 November 2000
"Obliging institutions to divulge internal notes, in many cases, would only cause confusion among citizens.. sometimes an increase in misinformation results from an excess of information."
- Loyola de Palacio, Vice-President of the European Commission, speaking in the European Parliament debate on access to EU documents, 16.11.00.
On 16 November the plenary session of the European Parliament (EP) adopted a report on the proposal put forward by the Commission in January on access to EU documents. The report was adopted by 409 votes to 3 with 44 abstentions (Green MEPs) giving the appearance of unanimity. The media duly reported the EP was backing the rights of citizens: "This vote sends a signal that we are going to deliver something that gives far greater access", said the rapporteur, Michael Cashman MEP. Unfortunately the gap between "spin" and substance is substantial and there are more new "rights" for the EU institutions than for the citizen in the report.
EP vote - an unusual alliance
In the 1999 election to the European Parliament the PPE group (conservative) became the largest in the EP and the PSE (Socialist group, social democrat) the second largest party. Historically the position of the PSE (Socialist group) has been an honourable one and it has made significant contributions to the debate on openness and access to documents. In the newly-elected parliament it has been extremely rare for these two groups to act together but on this occasion they did.
Back in August the first two draft reports by Michael Cashman (UK/PSE) and Hanja Maij-Weggen (NL/PPE) both incorporated the now infamous "Solana Decision". By September, embarrassed by the exposure of the effect of the "Solana Decision", these provisions were withdrawn from the reports. But at the same time there emerged a de-facto "common position" between the PSE/PPE (see Statewatch, vol 10 no 5).
In the run-up to the vote in the plenary session on 16 November a number of meetings took place behind the scenes where all the rapporteurs from the six committees involved discussed possible amendments and the Commission gave its reaction (see below). It became apparent that the PSE/PPE alliance was not going to budge on any significant changes and this was reflected in the vote on the floor of the plenary session.
A series of amendments, which would have improved a weak report, were put forward by the Green and the ELDR (Liberal) groups and routinely voted down (eg: 300 votes to 135).
In the debate Michael Cashman (PSE) paid a "special tribute" to "my fellow rapporteur, Mrs Maij-Weggen" and went on to attack critics of the report:
I regret that the report has been misrepresented by some for short-term political gain. A few cheap headlines, a few inches of print remove such people from reality.
Critics of the report included on the one hand the Council, Commission, the Green and ELDR groups, and civil society groups like the European Environmental Bureau, the European Federation of Journalists and Statewatch who opposed the inclusion of no less that six references to new "rights" for the Brussels-based EU institutions (including a series of interinstitutional agreements) being included - all doubted whether Article 255 of the Amsterdam Treaty to "enshrine" rights for the citizen could be used for this purpose. Most also were against including provisions on an interinstitutional classification system. On the other hand the Green and ELDR groups and civil society groups sought to actually increase the rights of access of citizens and to ensure that existing rights were not cast aside.
Extraordinarily this opposition to the report only served to convince Cashman that the report and his defence of it were right:
the fundamental problems the Council and Commission foresee with my report are, interestingly enough, the very same differences apparent between the majority of Parliament [PSE/PPE] and some of the smaller groups in this House.
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