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Anförande av justitieminister Beatrice Ask vid seminarium den 20 januari 2009 anordnat av Europaparlamentet och det tjeckiska parlamentet i Bryssel

Honourable Members of Parliaments, ladies and gentlemen.

I would like to start by saying that it is an honour and a pleasure for me to be here today. I am very grateful for your invitation.

I strongly believe that transparency in general and access to documents in particular are vital components in a modern democracy. They allow citizens to exercise control over the administration. This in turn promotes the administration's efficiency and counteracts corruption. In the end, this will give greater legitimacy to any administration.

I have been asked to primarily address the issue of Best Practices in Member States - in my case Sweden - regarding transparency. The right of access to official documents is a cornerstone of the Swedish constitution and of our administration. It has been so since the eighteenth century. As Minister for Justice, I am responsible for constitutional law as well as other relevant legislation regarding access to documents. This legislation will naturally be my starting point.

I will focus on some general principles that are particularly interesting to discuss in the light of the ongoing revision of the rules on access to EU documents.

The Swedish Constitution gives citizens a right of access to all documents drawn up or received by any public authority. No public authorities are excepted. The legislation is "medium neutral" - any information fixed on any kind of physical medium is covered.

This certainly doesn't mean that all documents are actually accessible. In our Constitution, we have an exhaustive list of public and private interests that should be protected. This list has been implemented through our Secrecy Act, which is quite detailed. Access to information considered sensitive in accordance with the Constitution and the Secrecy Act is denied. All requests are handled on a case-by-case basis and repeated requests are re-evaluated on each occasion.

In summary; we have rules applicable to all documents, regardless of medium, held by all public authorities. Citizens have access unless a secrecy exception included in the Constitution protects the information in question. The fundamental rules on access to documents are fairly easy for the ordinary citizen to grasp.

The EU system has many features similar to the Swedish one. At present, all documents held by the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission are accessible, unless a secrecy exception in the Transparency Regulation protects the information.

The major difference between the Swedish system and the Union system is that only three of the EU Institutions - and not all of them - are covered by the rules on access to documents.

Experience shows that general rules like these, covering all documents held by all authorities, combined with adequate secrecy exceptions, give citizens the widest possible access.

Rules like these strike the right balance between the fundamental interests at stake - transparency and the protection of sensitive information. Our Constitutional right of access to documents has been applied by our authorities for over 200 years. The Union has had its rules on access since 2001. In my opinion, the community rules on access function as well as our national rules.

This is why I ask myself if there really is a need for change on these particular points, so soon after the adoption of the Regulation on access to EU documents?

In the Commission proposal regarding the Regulation, the Commission argues that:

firstly: certain criteria should be added to the definition of a document (for example, a document drawn up by an institution is not a document unless it has been registered or formally transmitted),

secondly: certain categories of documents should be excluded from the scope of the Regulation, regardless of their content, and

thirdly: secrecy exceptions in the Regulation should be applied alongside of rules in other community law instruments as well as national legislation. That means that, in certain cases, a citizen must be familiar with at least 28 sets of rules to have a chance of predicting, let alone understanding, a decision following a request for access to a document.

These three parts of the proposal don't seem to increase transparency. I believe that they would have the opposite effect.

Furthermore, rules like these would be far more difficult to understand for regular people. We need to be clear on this; they are the ones actually using the rules, they are the ones seeking information.

If we choose that path, I fear we're heading down a slippery slope.

What also needs to be addressed at this point are the more fundamental issues of legitimacy and trust that I mentioned at the beginning.

A lot of people see the European Union as a secret Brussels club. In the recent debate on the new treaty, voices were raised regarding the lack of information.

The Treaty states that we are striving for an "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizens".

I wonder, can we really expect our citizens to believe this to be true  when we suggest that the decisions taken on their behalf should be kept even more secret than before?

I think we need to come back to basics in our discussions on transparency. We need to discuss how to strike the right balance between the interests at stake. We must never forget the core reasons for having rules on transparency in the first place.

It comes down to the issue of trust - if the citizens don t trust us, we have failed.

I seem to have somewhat drifted away from my task - Best Practices in Member States - but I couldn't help saying a few words about the ongoing revision of the Regulation on access to EU documents whilst I had the chance.

So back to Sweden then. I think I have time to address one more, very important, issue when it comes to making this fundamental right real and feasible for ordinary people: registration.

According to Swedish legislation, all documents drawn up or received by an authority should, in principle, be registered. The possibility to browse through the registers yourself, to see if anything catches the eye, gives the citizens a right with real substance.

Sure, a request for documents you think exist might be granted but it is inevitably easier to search for information you are interested in if you can look it up yourself.

I am the first to admit that in practice, there is certainly room for improvement when it comes to Swedish registers. To be able to use registers properly (both the administration and the citizen), we first need legislation and then of course education of staff. I hope for the European Union to master comprehensive registers for the institutions within the near future.

Honorable Members of Parliaments, Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you for your kind interest.