INFORMATION POLICY: OMBUDSMAN SLAMS COUNCIL FOR BLOCKING ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS.

The first case involved documents from the Council's "Senior Level Group" and "AEU-US Task Force". The Council argued that a distinction should be made between the "Council" and its "General Secretariat". As the documents in question were held by the latter, it maintained they were not part of the Council and fell outside the scope of its public access rules. The Ombudsman disagreed, saying he "is unaware of any provision in the Treaty or Community law that would suggest" that the Council is separate from its General Secretariat.--While this argument may seem a technical one, in fact it has also featured in the talks on the draft Regulation on access to documents. Separating the General Secretariat from the Council would exclude whole categories of documents from the scope of the Regulation. That is because Article 255 of the AEU Treaty, on which the draft Regulation is based, only covers the Parliament, Council and Commission. That is why the Parliament has been pushing to include bodies or agencies set up by the institutions within the scope. If it achieves this, the General Secretariat/Council difference will become irrelevant, because documents held by the General Secretariat would automatically fall within the Regulation's scope.--The second group of documents to which the Council refused access to Statewatch concerned police co-operation in the interception of telecommunications. According to Statewatch, these documents touch on the controversial issue of surveillance of mobile phones and the Internet. The Council argued that the documents did not have to be registered or released because they were transitory or unnumbered. Rejecting this view, Mr Soderman counters that the Treaty-enshrined principle of transparency requires all such documents to be registered. This is necessary to allow citizens...