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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Environmentalists Gate-Crash EU Co-ordination Meeting Geneva, 18 January 1998 - During negotiations on a new Public Participation Convention (1) held at the UN in Geneva last week, environmental NGOs attempted to gate-crash a meeting of EU governments being held to co-ordinate the EU's input into the negotiations. The environmentalists were protesting at the secrecy which has characterised the EU co-ordination process in the negotiations. The protest took place during the 9th and penultimate session of the intergovernmental Working Group drafting the UN ECE Convention on Access to Environmental Information, Public Participation in Environmental Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters - a proposed international law designed to improve the transparency and accountability of governments. The two EU-based members of the environmental NGO delegation to the negotiations, Jeremy Wates of the European Environmental Bureau and Peter Roderick of Friends of the Earth and EarthRights, took their seats at the start of the EU co-ordination meeting, causing consternation among some of the EU officials. When informed that the meeting was a closed one, the NGOs argued that the accountability of governments to their own citizens was more important than the pact of secrecy that EU governments have with each other. After pointing out that the co-ordination of EU positions in secret was having a negative impact on the overall transparency of the pan-European negotiations, the environmentalists agreed to leave peacefully but vowed to continue their pressure for openness and transparency. At a later EU co-ordination meeting, the NGOs protested outside with a placard declaring 'Let the Public In'. When the officials did not oblige, the NGOs slid the placard under the door to the meeting room. (photos will be available). The secrecy of EU co-ordination meetings has become a major bone of contention in the Convention negotiations, not least because it is in stark contrast to the very open and participatory style of the rest of the negotiations. NGOs participate in all the plenary sessions of the Working Group as well as in every small drafting group - the only exception being the EU co-ordination meetings. In practice, this means that whereas information on the input of all non-EU countries is known to the NGOs and the wider public, the positions of individual EU countries may be concealed behind a common EU position. Thus, the public in EU Member States are kept ignorant of how the common EU position was arrived at and how their own government influenced the outcome. "It is totally unacceptable that citizens of EU member states are unable to know the positions their own governments are adopting in negotiations on a law on access to information," said Jeremy Wates, Co-ordinator of the NGO delegation to the negotiations. "The final common EU position is does not tell us enough. If accountability of government means anything, we have to know how that common position was arrived at. We are therefore asserting our rights, as EU citizens and representatives of environmental NGOs, to know how our governments are representing our interests in these negotiations." "It is ironic that the EU member states should prove to be the most secretive group of countries within negotiations which include all the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia," said Peter Roderick, legal expert on the NGO delegation. "They claim that they are forced to exclude us on legal and policy grounds, but basically it comes down to a lack of political will," he added. As a gesture towards the NGO concerns, the EU meeting agreed that the NGOs could meet, as necessary, with a 'troika' consisting of the current Presidency (UK) together with the last and next Presidencies, and the European Commission to keep open a line of communication. However, while the NGOs are taking up this offer, it does not replace the need for opening up the EU co-ordination meetings to public scrutiny, or for full disclosure of all the positions adopted by individual governments. Contacts: Peter Roderick, Legal Expert, NGO delegation to the Convention negotiations: NOTES (1) The UN Economic Commission for Europe covers the whole of Europe, five Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union, the US, Canada and Israel. Negotiations on the new Convention began in June 1996. Environmental NGOs have participated actively throughout the drafting process. The Convention is expected to be signed by Environment Ministers at the 4th 'Environment for Europe' conference, to be held in Arhus, Denmark, in June 1998. (2) The European Commission has recently (4.12.97) obtained a mandate from the EU Council to negotiate on behalf of the Member States on those provisions of the Convention which fall within Community competence - primarily, the access to information and some of the participation provisions. The EU is expected to become a Party to the Convention in its own right - a prospect which is welcomed by the NGO delegation, insofar as the EU institutions themselves would be bound by the provisions of the Convention. This might help to remove the 'democratic deficit' in the EU. ENDS mara.silina@foeeurope.org - Public Participation Campaign - webmaster |
