The Guardian Thursday February 18 1999
Martin Walker in Brussels
EUROPE'S ombudsman launched a powerful attack yesterday on the "unnecessary and unacceptable" cult of secrecy in the European Commission and other European Union institutions, complaining of having to operate under commission rules that, he said, "could even oblige a witness to lie if instructed to do so by superiors".
"The limits placed on the hearing of witnesses are inadmissible," the ombudsman, Jacob Söderman of Finland, said in his annual report to the European Parliament. The current statute under which the ombudsman operates "is in fact an obstacle to dealing properly with cases of corruption and fraud within the European administration", he told the MEPs.
Mr Söderman openly rebelled yesterday against the rules which stop him doing his job. He said he could be refused access to internal documents on "duly substantiated grounds of secrecy", which he sees as a problematic catch-all excuse.
He also complained that EU employees, when giving testimony, were legally forbidden to become whistle-blowers, They were required to "speak on behalf of and in accordance with instructions from their administrations, and shall continue to be bound by their duty of professional secrecy".
"If the aim is that the ombudsman's inquires should contribute to fighting corruption and fraud in the administration on the basis of complaint or initiatives, these inappropriate limitations should be removed."
But in a striking change from the current climate of commission-bashing, he also criticised the Council of Ministers, the forum in which the 15 national governments meet,. for blocking a series of re- quests for documents from the British civil liberties organisation Statewatch.
The council was criticised for refusing to publish documents of the secretive and powerful K4 committee on security matters and policing, claiming that Statewatch's requests should be rejected on the grounds that they were simply "repeat applications" and requested a "very large number of documents".
The council informed the ombudsman that Statewatch "uses a systematic technique to obtain access to all council JHA [justice and home affairs] documents. That technique consists of initially request- ins the agendas of all the council bodies dealing with JHA matters and subsequently requesting all the documents included in agendas. The ombudsman's report said there was nothing improper about Statewatch's tactics and that it should have the documents. It added that the council had "wrongly interpreted" its own rules and should not, in future try to stonewall.
"We have nothing but praise for the way the ombudsman has handled our cases and upheld the principle of public access to the way these important decisions are made", the director of Statewatch, Tony Bunyan, said yesterday.
"The ombudsman procedure is really important for individual citizens or non- government organisations, because, unlike appeals to the court of justice, it is free, it is open, and you as the complaining citizen are in control, rather than the legal system," he added.
The ombudsman received 1,360 complaints last year, mostly from France, Spain and Italy (~4 per cent each). Britain was the fifth most common source of complaints, although without the series of Statewatch complaints it might have fallen behind Belgium. The fewest complaints came from Austria.
Over half the complaints fell outside the ombudsman's mandate but relating to matters involving a member state's own administration. This included problems of exercising the right of free movement within the EU. The ombudsman suggested he should have jurisdiction over such cases.