Legal charity ClientEarth says the European Commission is quietly restricting access to documents, such as text messages from EU officials.
BRUSSELS — Environmental charity ClientEarth has launched an official complaint against the European Commission for what it claims is an anti-transparency push that will weaken public scrutiny of European Union decision-making.
The complaint relates to the first meeting of the new Commission on Dec. 4, when President Ursula von der Leyen and her new team adopted a decision that limits access to certain official documents, ClientEarth says.
The NGO, which uses legal action to push for environmental protection, announced Monday it is launching a complaint and asking the Commission to reconsider its decision.
“Transparent decision-making is one of the pillars of democracy and the rule of law, both of which the Commission is in charge of safeguarding,” said Ilze Tralmaka, a lawyer with ClientEarth.
“The changes create inaccessible processes that shut out stakeholders from crucial environmental decisions, leaving civil society and the public at the mercy of institutional gatekeeping,” she added.
According to ClientEarth’s legal analysis, the Commission’s decision restricts the definition of a “document” and therefore limits what could be released under an access to information request. It would notably exclude draft impact assessments or documents related to ongoing files, including authorizations of chemicals or pesticides, as well as opinions from the Commission’s legal service.
This could also put the EU in breach of the Aarhus Convention, an international treaty that provides the public with broad access to information about decision-making for environmental legislation, Tralmaka said.
The new rules also prescribe that text messages not be used for important information and must be deleted automatically. The changes come as journalists have been requesting access to von der Leyen’s text messages with the CEO of pharmaceutical company Pfizer when the EU was negotiating the purchase of millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic. The Court of Justice of the EU is currently examining whether the Commission should have disclosed these texts under its transparency rules, and is expected to release its final ruling soon.
The Commission’s Dec. 4 decision also restricts who can ask for public access to Commission documents and excludes people and organizations residing outside the EU.
The restrictions, Tralmaka said, are “quite concerning because if we take critical raw materials, for example, the Commission is making decisions about mining projects in different countries that are far outside [the] EU, and they [third-country nationals and organizations] won’t be able to request information” about them.
German Greens MEP Daniel Freund also said that “the public has a right to know how the EU Commission works and what it does,” adding that “it is unacceptable how the EU Commission simply makes documents disappear in this case.”
“Unfortunately, refusing access particularly to text messages is a recurring pattern with Ursula von der Leyen,” he told POLITICO.
The EU executive now has 16 weeks to respond to ClientEarth’s complaint. If the NGO is not satisfied with the answer provided it can take the matter to the EU’s top court, which will settle the dispute.
“There is a feeling of backsliding [on transparency],” Tralmaka told POLITICO, and not only regarding environmental legislation.
European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly — who will be replaced by Teresa Anjinho from Feb. 27 — declined to comment for this article.
The Commission did not immediately reply to a request for comment.