Council of Europe criticises restricted access to public information

The Council of Europe has criticised the “restrictive application of the right of access to information” in some European countries, that contribute to a lack of transparency and political corruption.

In its 2022 anti-corruption annual report published on Thursday (15 June), the Council of Europe “regrets that in some countries, governments are still accorded a broad margin of discretion for determining what is in the public domain and whether to exclude certain documents from free access”.

The Council of Europe (CoE) is a human rights organisation with 46 member states based in Strasbourg and is not an EU institution.

The publication adds that too many governments are ‘reluctant’ to provide information, applying ‘exceptions’ that give the possibility to partially or totally hide information.

In addition, the CoE explains that the application of laws on freedom of access to information is ‘inconsistent’ in many member states.

“Governments should guarantee the overall principle of transparency of public documents in practice. Any exception to the rule of public disclosure should be limited to a minimum and be thoroughly justified,” said Marin Mrčela, the President of the Group of States against Corruption of the CoE (GRECO), on Thursday.

“When it comes specifically to public procurement, public scrutiny and access to official documents are key to effectively preventing corruption,” he added.

The CoE also criticises some aspects of the access to information in the lawmaking process, for instance, the lack of respect of “public consultation timeframes,” which can put obstacles to produce “meaningful contributions and influencing the legislative process”.

Implementation

The 2022 report also analyses the implementation of anti-corruption recommendations the CoE published in 2021, and on this occasion, the organisation detected that 49.5% of 2021 recommendations about members of the parliaments, judges and prosecutors “had been fully implemented at the end of 2022”.

However, under two thirds of recommendation were “fully or partially” implemented by law enforcement authorities.

Meanwhile, the report skated over the Qatargate corruption scandal which engulfed the EU institutions at the start of the year. Last week, the European Commission set out plans to create an EU ethics body, while the European Parliament has introduced its own reforms to increase transparency and monitor the access of interest groups and lobbyists to the EU institutions.

“The developments around allegations of bribery and foreign influence vis-a-vis the European Parliament at the end of the year would appear to confirm the merit of looking at a closer engagement of the European Union within GRECO,” was the Council of Europe report’s only reference to the scandal.

[Edited by Benjamin Fox]