EU May Let Public In On the Secrets

Sparked mainly by the Swedes but aided by the Finns, both of whom joined only 17 months ago, a powerful new campaign is underway at the European Union to pry open its institutions and expose its work to the full glare of public scrutiny for the first time.

Encouraged by the arrival of its like-minded Scandinavian cousins, Denmark has also taken up the cause, as have the Dutch.

While advocates say an increased openness at the EU would lead to greater democracy and probably deeper acceptance of the increasingly influential unified Europe, others worry that it may worsen national tensions and diminish the power of smaller countries.

“It’s clear that the secrecy debate has gotten a big boost from the accession of Sweden,” said Norbert Schwaiger, chief spokesman for the EU’s Council of Ministers, which decides--in secret, of course--which proposals become union-wide law. “The newcomers are trying to export the rules of openness they have at home.”

In part, the debate on greater openness reflects a clash of national cultures: In France, Italy and some other founding member countries, citizens tend to accept the state’s right to decide in private, and that tradition has collided with centuries-old Scandinavian laws that make virtually every official document open to the public.

Swedish legislation dating from the mid-1700s, for example, guarantees public access to almost all government documents, including a register of the prime minister’s mail. With few exceptions, copies of that mail are provided to all who ask.

Because so many Council of Ministers documents circulate in the capitals of every member state, an Italian wondering about the meaning of EU legislation for Italy is likely to find out more in Stockholm than in Rome.

For anyone who believes in democracy and free speech, the new Scandinavian-led effort to bring greater transparency to Europe’s struggle for peaceful integration would seem long overdue.

Indeed, some view it as essential if the EU is ever going to fulfill its dream of economic and political unity. Both directly and indirectly, EU legislation has an increased influence over the lives of the 370 million Europeans who live in the 15 member states.

In 1994, the French National Assembly estimated that two-thirds of the laws it enacted stemmed from decisions made by the Council of Ministers.

“Unless this issue is resolved, there can be no [public] acceptance of a unified Europe,” argued Aidan White, Brussels-based general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, who also chairs an EU forum on the information exchange. “The quality of democracy and the exchange of information must improve. It’s the only way to restore confidence in the movement.”

Others, however, claim that it is not that simple.

They say, for example, that to consider the council as just another legislature is to ignore both the Continent’s violent history as well as the fragility of the integration so far achieved. Much of the EU’s success so far, they argue, has been precisely because differences between countries could be resolved in private, without arousing national passions.

“The council is a power game between 15 member states,” Schwaiger said. “Compromise would be politically much tougher if all positions were open. With the hate that has consumed our continent, I sometimes feel it’s too early for [a fully open debate]. We’re not far enough along yet.”

Smaller countries such as Belgium and Luxembourg also worry that, if council plenary sessions were made public, they would have less of a voice: Real decision-making would move to the corridors, where the larger states would informally strike deals among themselves, this argument goes.

“There’s always been some power-brokering, but throwing the doors open would increase this,” Schwaiger said.

The new push toward openness in the EU runs against the grain.

Indeed, in the early years, when the devastation of World War II still blighted the landscapes of Western Europe, those who dreamed of European unity launched their work as a kind of benevolent conspiracy.

There was the agreement locking French and German industrial interests together in the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, the subsequent birth of the Common Market and the more recent commitment to form a single European market with unprecedented freedom of movement.

All this occurred with an astonishing lack of public knowledge or understanding.

With the support of member governments, an era of unparalleled economic prosperity and a set of issues that seemed arcane and remote to most people, the alliance of political visionaries and Brussels “Eurocrats” pushed their crusade forward with few questions from the grass roots--and little accountability.

Not even the national parliaments that voted away large chunks of sovereignty to European institutions seemed to grasp the real significance of their actions.

About the time the U.S. Congress threw open the doors to the innermost workings of the American government by passing the Freedom of Information Act in 1966, a veil of secrecy had settled over the then-Common Market’s institutions.

It was so impenetrable that respected former European Parliament leader Rudiger von Wechmar of Germany once quipped that, if the European Union applied for membership in the European Union, it would be rejected as undemocratic.

In part because of the lack of openness, Europeans are often caught by surprise at just how far the Union’s power extends. Most citizens merely shake their heads in wonderment that the EU has developed and enacted regulations that classify carrots as a fruit and cucumbers according to their shape--curved or straight.

But there was genuine anger in Britain when people learned that the EU had the power to prevent British candy bar manufacturers from labeling their products as chocolate because in some cases the ingredients failed to meet an official definition. Germans were equally upset a few years ago when they found that the Union had the power to alter a 450-year-old law guaranteeing the purity of their beer.

Whatever secrecy has existed to date, the tide of events appears to be moving in the direction of greater openness.

For many, the turning point came in June 1992, when Danes sent shock waves through Europe by rejecting in a national referendum the 1991 Maastricht Treaty on economic and political union.

Although Denmark eventually ratified the treaty after a second referendum, the initial rejection confirmed nagging fears that the European institutions in Brussels had drifted dangerously out of touch with the electorate they purported to serve.

More out of an instinct for survival than any genuine conviction, the EU has drawn up codes of conduct pledging greater transparency and moved to narrow the gap separating it from its citizens.

Voting records and minutes of high-level meetings have been made available. There is a formal procedure for dealing with public requests for official documents. And the opening portions of at least four meetings a year are now televised.

Also, there are restrictions on the use of “secret minutes”--confidential amendments attached to laws that in some cases altered the substance of the published legislation.

Swedish-sponsored proposals for opening up the proceedings further are being debated before a special intergovernmental conference reviewing the Maastricht Treaty. Meanwhile, steps have been taken to make official documents available to the public.

“There’s a general agreement now that it’s a good thing to have citizens more involved, and that of course means more openness,” said White, the journalists federation official.

But progress so far is relative.

Debates that explain the basis for a vote remain confidential, while televised sessions are restricted to carefully staged speeches. And any member state has the right to veto the cameras if it chooses.

The resulting transmissions have been so boring that not a single channel in any of the EU’s member states carries them.

“Journalists aren’t interested,” Schwaiger said of the public sessions. “In the future, we plan to target student groups for them.”

The procedure for providing documents to members of the public is cumbersome, and frequently it is the president of the council--a post filled by a member country’s head of state or government--who must sign the release.

“I see a certain movement toward more openness, but there’s a long way to go,” said Frode Cristoffersen, a Danish member of the European Parliament, which has more than 600 elected representatives. “As long as these institutions can’t explain themselves to the public, there will be a distance between them and the citizen, and that’s not good.”

Meanwhile, the Council of Ministers’ reluctance to follow through on commitments to greater openness has brought a series of legal challenges, mainly from journalists.

In October, the European Court of Justice annulled the council’s blanket refusal to hand over a series of documents on social, judicial and agricultural affairs requested by John Carvel, a reporter from the British newspaper the Guardian. But months after submitting a new request for the same documents, Carvel is still waiting for some of the material.

“I’m optimistic in the long run, but [opening up the EU] is a painfully slow process,” White said. “The problem is that common sense can’t prevail because there is no culture of openness. . . . Brussels needs to be taught to be open.”