Historic European Union Court of Justice judgment breaks wall of silence around USA- EU Transatlantic Trade Agreement | Economía Ciudadana

Historic European Union Court of Justice judgment breaks wall of silence around USA- EU Transatlantic Trade Agreement | Economía Ciudadana:

 On 3 July, the Court of Justice of the European Union (First Chamber) passed a historic judgment, in response to an appeal filed by the Council seeking to refuse access to international negotiation documents to European citizens and to their representatives in the European Parliament.

While Judgment C 350/12 P does not refer specifically to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, it does have a direct impact on it, establishing – and in the process establishing case law to oppose the Commission’s habitual secrecy – the obligation of allowing total or partial access to international negotiation documents to European Union citizens and their elected political representatives in the European Parliament, annulling the stratagems most commonly used to deny access to such information, usually based on hypothetical damages or by simply claiming that talks are already underway.

As is becoming increasingly habitual in the TTIP talks, the European Council and the European Commission are systematically blocking access to documents, based on the hypothetical damage that would be caused by making EU negotiation strategies public, with the Commission maintaining that this would give a sizeable advantage to the other side to the talks – the USA.

The ECJ judgment accurately balances the interests of the institutions, which must on the one hand ensure access to all information concerning their management, as an effective example of guaranteeing the citizens’ right to transparency, and on the other must employ the necessary level of discretion required for international negotiation processes, to avoid revealing basic negotiation strategies to other parties to the talks.

While transparency ought to be an intrinsic quality of the European institutions – particularly in the case of the barely-democratic European Commission – the ECJ has been obliged to remind the Executive Power of a series of self-evident truths regarding transparency, access to documents produced or received by European institutions, and basic citizen’s rights, all enshrined under Article 6 of the Treaty of the European Union and in the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The Court recognises that there are exceptions to full access to documents, including personal information and the exceptions established in Regulation (EC) 1049/2001, Articles 4.1.a) third dash,4.2 second dash, and 6.