What is the Council of Ministers? Council Decisions And Secrecy
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This article is from the European Union FAQ, by Roland Siebelink & Bart Schelfhout with numerous contributions by others.
What is the Council of Ministers? Council Decisions And Secrecy
The Council always meets behind closed doors; only the outcome of the
decision is published afterwards. In some cases it is not even clear which
Member States have supported or rejected which parts of the original
Commission or European Parliament proposals. This secrecy is often thought
to be one of the most undemocratic aspects of the European Union; Council
members are effectively unaccountable to their national parliaments for
whatever +national; position they claim to defend within Council meetings,
and they can always blame other Member States (without means of
verification) for Council decisions out of line with national European
policies.
Personally I feel that there is also a more philosophically undemocratic
aspect to this secrecy: the fact that there is no publicly acknowledged
opposition to Council policies. It is my view that the right to dissent
publicly is a fundamental aspect of democracy, even if democracy also
requires dissenters to loyally follow majority decisions until they can
muster a majority for their own dissenting proposal. The secretive and often
+unanimous; decision making within the Council does not acknowledge the fact
that there are always different sides to a coin, and hence alienates itself
(and the EU as a whole) from the European Citizen.
Ole Villumsen[3] send me a very interesting contribution with regard to
another aspect of Council secrecy: the secret protocols appended to
decisions.
+The Council passes rules that are made public, and produces protoc
ols containing declarations, which are kept strictly secret. It happe
ns, although seldom, that the secret protocols say the opposite of th
e published rules. Examples are:
The TV directive says that TV programmes can be interrupted by
commercials no more frequently than once every 20 minutes. A secret
Council declaration states that TV stations can easily deviate from this
rule if it fits better with programme scheduling. Of course, this
flexibility can only be utilized by TV stations that have received a hint
about the declaration.
In February 1995, the ministers of industry passed a directive on
protecting the citizen against registration of personal data. The
directive prescribes that member countries forbid (computerised,
presumably) processing of sensitive personal information, such as ethnic
origin, political or religious conviction, and information on health and
sex life. At the same time, the ministers and the Commission agreed on a
secret declaration stating that member countries can +pay regard to the
country's juridical and sociological characteristics, for example in
matters of information on genetic identity, political affiliation,
physical condition, punishments, personal habits, etc.;
Normally it is the job of the Commission to ensure that the rules a
re followed, in practice by checking that national legislations imple
ment them. When the commission knows about the secret protocols, it c
an take them into account. Should an ordinary citizen bring a case to
court, the court will have to judge according to the published rules
only.;
(Source: Danish newspaper Information, Saturday, May 20, 1995)
In a separate message, Ole also noted that there is some progress to
reducing secrecy:
+The good news is that the Council of foreign affairs ministers on
their Monday meeting [...] May 29 decided that they will no more use
the option of keeping their voting secret. Whether the decision has e
ffect for the Council when other kinds of ministers meet, was not cle
ar from my newspaper (Information, May 30 1995).
Richard Corbett[4] finds this section somewhat exaggerated:
No +protocols; - which are legally binding texts - are adopted in s
ecret. What is secret is declarations attached to the Council minutes
whereby individual States, the Commission or the Council collectivel
y make a statement as to how they interpret a legal text.
This is indeed a problem, but the European Court has ruled - and Co
uncil itself accepts - that the legal text actually adopted (and publ
ished therefore in the Official Journal) is the only one with binding
legal effect. Council has now agreed to limit the use of such declar
ations and, where they are made, will normally publish them. However,
it has not abolished entirely the possibility of making declarations
and keeping them secret.
As regards voting in Council, the Council does now publish the resu
lts of all such votes. However, it retains the right to decide not to
publish them, even if it has not recently used this right.
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