European Parliamentarians Call on Council of Europe to Redraft Substandard Convention on Access to Official Documents

STRASBOURG—The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe last week adopted unanimously a resolution expressing concern that the world's first treaty intended to guarantee public access to information had significant flaws. In a rare step, the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe called for the Convention on Access to Official Documents to be redrafted.

The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe's opinion identifies a series of problems with the draft treaty including:

• Lack of a general statement on the right to information establishing that "all official documents are in principle public and can be withheld subject only to the protection of other rights and legitimate interests."
• The absence of mandatory time limits for answering requests. The European Court of Human Rights has established that information "is a perishable commodity and to delay its publication even for a short period may well deprive it of all value and interest."
• Narrow definition of "public authorities" that excludes the main functions of legislative and judicial bodies as well as private bodies that perform public functions or operate with public funds, "allowing some public bodies to continue operating in the shadows."
• Requestors should have a right to appeal to a review body that has the power to order disclosure of the requested official document.
• States given freedom to enter reservations on any provision of the convention, thereby undermining the "delicate balance of many individual components" needed to make the right of access to information function in practice.

Access Info Europe, ARTICLE 19, and the Open Society Justice Initiative, which have raised these concerns for more than two years and garnered endorsements of more than 250 civil society organizations, welcomed Friday's vote and called on the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers not to adopt the draft convention as it stands.

Speaking in the parliamentary assembly debate on Friday, Klaas de Vries, a former cabinet minister in the Netherlands who prepared the opinion on behalf of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe Legal Affairs and Human Right Committee, called on the Committee of Ministers to "go this extra mile now" adding that "we will be criticized for years to come if we don't act now."

De Vries noted the current crisis of trust in government in Europe, pointing out that this was a result of the "structural reluctance to inform" the public and that "governments are not trusted because they do not trust their own citizens [with information]."

During the debate other parliamentarians stressed that the world's first binding convention on the democratic right of access to information should not be drafted by government experts alone but in full consultation with the elected representatives of the Council of Europe's 47 member states.

The Parliamentary Assembly's opinion will be presented to the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers. This body, composed of the foreign ministers of member states, has the final say on whether or not to adopt the draft Convention on Access to Official Documents in its present form or to set up a process for redrafting. Sweden holds the Chairmanship of the Council of Europe until November 2008.