Council of Europe Accused of Secrecy Over Convention on Transparency

LONDON—Human rights organizations working on government transparency filed a request last week with the Council of Europe for information about the Convention on Access to Official Documents. The convention, still in draft form, has been heavily criticized and is being finalized under a shroud of secrecy.

"It's more than a little ironic that the world's first international treaty on access to information is being decided upon behind closed doors," said Helen Darbishire, executive director of Access Info Europe. "The public has the right to know what is being discussed, and what positions our governments are taking on the treaty," commented Darbishire, whose organization, along with the Open Society Justice Initiative and Article 19, is leading civil society efforts to promote a stronger treaty that fully protects the right of access to information.

The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, which is composed of delegations from the national parliaments of the 47 countries, adopted an unusually critical opinion of the treaty in October. It identified numerous problems with the draft convention and called for the Council of Europe to allot more time for redrafting.

On November 12, the Council of Europe reportedly considered whether or not to act on the parliamentary assembly's opinion of the treaty, but did so without notifying the public of their conclusions. Neither elected representatives nor civil society received any information about what was discussed or how the meeting might impact treaty negotiations. An information request was therefore filed on November 14 with Terry Davis, secretary general of the Council of Europe, asking for information about what happened in the meeting.

The Committee of Ministers, chaired by Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, will vote on the convention's adoption on November 27. Civil society groups have called on Minister Bildt to ensure that their concerns are discussed before any vote is scheduled. Sweden became the first country in the world to grant its citizens a right to access information in 1776.

"Sweden 's reputation as an advocate of transparency will be substantially tarnished if Minister Bildt allows the treaty to be adopted in its current form without adequate attention to the concerns raised by civil society, information commissioners, and governments," said Sandra Coliver of the Justice Initiative.

The parliamentary assembly's opinion identified a number of problems in the treaty, including the narrow range of public bodies to which the right applies, shortcomings in the definition of documents, the absence of maximum time-limits for answering requests, the failure to give requestors a right to appeal to an independent body or court that can order disclosure of information, and the failure to restrict the reservations that states may make to the convention's provisions, which is highly unusual for a Council of Europe human rights treaty.

"There are double standards at play here," said Toby Mendel of Article 19. "The Council of Europe is promoting a convention on access to information as a tool for public participation in decision making, but at the same time blocking such participation in the discussion over the draft Convention by withholding information about the decision-making process."