Statewatch application splits EU Council
01 May 1996
An application for access to European Union Council documents by UK journalist and Statewatch editor Tony Bunyan has split the Member States of the European Union down the middle.
Member states split 8 votes to 7, both in COREPER (the Brussels-based Committee of permanent representatives of each EU government) and in the Council of Ministers, to refuse access to nine sets of Minutes of the K4 Committee - which coordinates policy on policing, immigration and asylum and legal cooperation under the "third pillar" and services the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers.
The gulf between the Members States quickly emerged when the Working Party on Information, comprised of the Press Officers from each of the 15 permanent delegations in Brussels, met to consider an appeal against the release of only 5 of the 14 documents requested. According to Mr Hans Brunmayr, of the Secretary-General's Department of the European Council, there was a five hour discussion at the Working Party on Information meeting and, even more unusual, a two hour discussion at the main COREPER meeting. This application for access to documents became, in effect, a test case with France, Belgium and Spain leading the opposition to ending secrecy.
The seven governments voting in favour of greater openness on this occasion were: Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and the UK. Denmark, Sweden and Finland issued declarations saying all the documents should have been provided.
"Abusing the good faith of the council"
Belgium and France issued an extraordinary declaration attacking the citizen's right to request access to Council documents. It said they said in a Declaration published officially by the European Council that:
"the applications by Mr Bunyan.. are contrary to the spirit of the 1993 decision and that they abuse the good faith of the Council in its willingness to be transparent."
Tony Bunyan commented: "The French and Belgian governments have a patronising view of the right of access to Council documents - it is apparently a democratic right which should not be used too often and certainly not regularly."
The issue in question was the interpretation by the General Secretariat of the Council of the term "repeat applications" in the Council's code of access to documents (agreed in December 1993). Tony Bunyan had asked for copies of 14 sets of Minutes of the K4 Committee which he had never applied for before. The reply, from Mr Bersani for the Italian Presidency, said the request "constitutes a repeat application similar to those which you have made in the past." (emphasis added) The rationale appears to be that as he had already requested agendas of these meetings a request for the Minutes was a "similar" request. The patent absurdity of this response was openly rejected by 7 Member States. As, according to a slim majority of Member States, it was a "repeat application" then a "fair solution" could be applied under the rules and only 5 of the 14 documents requested were released.
This case is one of three resulting from confirmatory applications made by Tony Bunyan over the past six months (see Statewatch vol 6 no 2, and feature in this issue). Taking the three cases together it is possible to set out the battlelines over the issue of secrecy and transparency in the EU. The governments which have consistently voted against openness in these cases are: Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy and Austria. Denmark, Sweden and Finland have taken the lead in calling for an end to secrecy, supported by Ireland, the Netherlands, Greece and the UK.
Addressing a seminar on "Openness and Transparency" organised by the Socialist Group of MEPs in Brussels on 13 June Mr Brunmayr said that the "Bunyan cases" had forced the Council to make several changes in the way the rules governing access to documents were applied. Three changes have so far been made. (See feature page on same s