(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The promises were made when Sweden took over the presidency in the EU on 1 January. This presidency, in practice, means that Swedish ministers are leading the meetings of the Council of Ministers this six months, and that it is the Swedish government that, together with the European Commission, represents the EU outwards.
The Swedish government already announced this autumn that it would put a great deal of effort into achieving a trusting relationship between EU citizens and the EU by opening the EU system for transparency. In early January, it presented a proposal for regulations for increased publicity.
The Swedes meet the wall
So far, the Swedes have met the wall. On 19 March, the EU Council of Ministers will make a decision that will close many of the doors that have recently been slammed shut. The Swedes wanted a decision on openness – and got a new decision on secrecy.
For example, the decision lays down the principle that any document submitted by a Member State to the EU should only be published if that Member State agrees.
The Swedish government had proposed the opposite: that all documents relating to a decision in the Council of Ministers should be publicly available – correctly enough after the decision has been made. But it turned out that the proposal had no chance of being adopted.
Documents stating what each Member State means in a case should also not be published unless that State accepts it.
Sweden had also proposed that minutes of ministerial meetings should be published when approved by the Council of Ministers. Neither was adopted.
Sweden has struggled with the strict secrecy of the EU ever since it became a member in 1995. The Swedes have a public law law in line with the Norwegian one, including a general rule that letters to and from public authorities should be publicly available. This has led to constant collisions between what people and the media have the right to know according to Swedish law and according to EU rules.
Right to request access
In 1993, it was decided with great fervor that EU citizens have the right to request access to any EU document. But the right to request access is not the same as the right to see such a document. It was up to the individual EU body to decide the individual application. The new thing was that refusals should be justified.
In 1995, access to document access was somewhat expanded, and in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997, EU citizens were given a treaty-bound "right to document access" in documents from the European Parliament, the Union Council and the European Commission.
The general rules – and restrictions – were to be laid down following a joint decision-making process in the Council of the Union and in the European Parliament. They are still struggling with that.
However, some improvements have been made. Until well into the 1990s, it was secret how the various countries voted in the Council of Ministers. This is no longer the case. In January 1999, the Council of Ministers began publishing a public register of Council documents on the Internet. From July 2000, documents have been posted on the Internet when a person has been granted access to the document upon application.
The Swedish government proposed in January that documents that were not exempt from public disclosure should be automatically posted online even if no one had asked for it. There was no majority for that.
Both open and closed
The EU system is both open and closed.
When the European Commission submits a formal proposal, for example to new legislative rules, for consideration in the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, the proposal is also published. The proposal can thus also be debated publicly. It should also just be missing.
By contrast, the European Commission is completely closed while new proposals are being prepared.
This applies to both the final examination in the Commission itself and to all preparations in expert committees and other working groups under the Commission. It does not even account for which committees are available, what composition they have or what they currently have.
This means that only those interest groups that are "in the heat" of the Commission have the opportunity to know what is going on. In return, some of them are directly involved in the Commission's case preparation. Large corporations and heavy business organizations have a special position here. In several important areas, they are constantly delivering detailed proposals which, without much change, end up as the Commission's own proposal.
This happened, for example, when the Commission launched its White Paper in 1985 with almost 300 proposals for internal market regulations. The White Paper was a blueprint of a proposal that the big corporation had within European Round Table of Industrialists had prepared.
The Commission's proposal for a directive on the patent on life was also devised and drafted by European genetic engineering groups to the smallest detail.
Open Parliament
The treatment in the European Parliament, on the other hand, is open. All Commission proposals are dealt with first in one of Parliament's regular committees and then in plenary. The committees are large gatherings of 30-50 people and the meetings are open. So are the plenary meetings.
All amendments are also public and can be downloaded from the web. It is therefore possible to find out how a particular case is dealt with in parliament and where the contradictions go.
Closed Council of Ministers
On the other hand, the proceedings in the Council of Ministers are closed for inspection. Here the rules for diplomatic contact between governments prevail. It is a secret which negotiating positions the governments take, how they negotiate, which alliances are entered into, which compromise proposals are launched. The only thing that is public is the end result – if there is any result in the form of a decision.
It is the Council of Ministers who makes the final decisions on behalf of the EU. In this Council, ministers from the 15 Member States meet, the finance ministers when economic matters are decided, the fisheries ministers when fisheries policy decisions are to be made.
It has long been a burden on the EU for the Council of Ministers to meet behind closed doors. Up to 1995, it was also secret what the individual ministers had voted for in the Council of Ministers.
There are now a handful of open-door debates in the Council of Ministers during the year. When specific cases are dealt with for decision, the doors are closed. But it is no longer secret what Danish and Swedish ministers vote when they meet their colleagues in the council.
