Parties stay tough on their positions, as EP-debate on wob approaches

Parties keep their positions as they struggle towards a reform of the EU-wob, a recent debate in the European Parliament showed. Debate in key-committee scheduled for February 17th.

The now seven-year-old EU-access-regulation was beginning to work. A little too well maybe? At least several sources claim, that last year's proposal for a reform drafted by the European Commission holds danger of rolling back transparency.
“If there are no changes, the danger (for a rollback) is there,” the European Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros says to Wobbing.eu. However he sees the debate “going forward as it should: We are going in the right direction,” he said after a hearing in the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament on Tuesday the 20th of January.

The next battle about the draft law will be in the European Parliament this spring and – if the Parliament agrees – the last battle is expected to take place under Swedish presidency in the autumn of 2009, when the 27 member states must agree. Only when the bill has made it’s way through the triangle of power of the EU, the Commission, the Parliament and the Council of national governments, it can enter into force.

Right now, however, parties could hardly disagree more. While Commissioner Margot Wallström explained that she and the Commission shared the same goal of more openness as everybody else, there was plenty of criticism against her bill from a number of sides, among them EU parliamentarians, the Swedish minister of justice and Chairman of the Legal Committee of the Finnish parliament, Riksdag, to name but a few.
During a previous hearing at the European Parliament in June 2008 the Ombudsman and a number of top lawyers in the field gave a harsh critique of the bill, amongst other things they pointed at a danger of arbitrariness and pointed out a lack of implementation of decisions by the European Court of Justice, that in several cases had called for more openness.

"We refuse the allegation that we will have less openness. One must read the proposal, "said commissioner Wallström to Wobbing.eu as she left the meeting of the Civil Liberties Committee  recently.

"It's interesting how we listen to the same debate and hear something completely different," commented the responsible British EU parliamentarian, Michael Cashman, with slight irony and continued more seriously: "I have to look at this like a policeman and consider whether this law could be abused. And right now, I see great potential for abuse, "said Cashman.

Both Cashman and Wallström emphasized that the law should provide more access and openness to citizens, since most users right now are interest groups, businesses and academics. "Not even journalists use it," said Margot Wallström.

The controversy has currently a series of disagreements. Firstly, the Commission proposes to exempt large sections of administrative documents from public access; secondly the definition of what is a document is set to be narrowed down so much it raised concern for arbitraryness; thirdly access to electronic documents is set to be made dependant of existing search tools; number four: a clash between openness and privacy legislation is not solved; number five the question of member state veto, which also has been treated by the European Court of Justice, is still being debated; and finally a recent judgement on legal opinions has come after the bill was drafted.

The next debate about the draft is scheduled in the Civil Liberties committe on the 17th of February, a plenary debate or decision in the Parliament is expected in March. However the Parliament may consider playing it's cards carefully in order to use it's power fully in this situation of very different positions of the Commission and the Parliament, while the Council seems to be divided.


EU Parliament draft amendments, report by Michael Cashman

The Ombudsman's analysis of the proposal, summer 2008, press release and report

The Ombudsman's analysis of public access to databases in Europe

Read a resumée of the above article in Danish