Will the public be kept in the paper ages while the EU institutions move on to a modern electronic administration? This is just one of the serious questions raised in the fight to maintain European citizens' right to information.

A heavy duty to save what can still be salvaged rests upon the European Parliament which will vote on the issue on Wednesday (11 March).

European Union has had transparency legislation since 2001, known as regulation 1049/01 to those following the issue closely. It is one of the most modern laws of its kind worldwide, guaranteeing European citizens and residents a good overview and option to scrutinise their administration.

Thanks to strong case-law in recent years, the way the law is put into practice is developing well. And there is an intense interest among citizens to use it, proven, for example, by the number of cases on the matter received by the European Ombudsman.

However, a draft proposal, disguised as a reform of the law, has been put forward which seriously threatens to roll back the developing transparency. The dangers of this proposal have not just been raised by journalists and activists but by no less than seven European ministers last week.

Access to electronically stored information

But let's have a look at what is at stake - particularly concerning access to electronically stored information.

The current law from 2001 goes as follows:

- ‘Document' shall mean any content whatever its medium (written on paper or stored in electronic form or as a sound, visual or audiovisual recording) concerning a matter relating to the policies, activities and decisions falling within the institution's sphere of responsibility.

Any content whatever its medium with the explicit mentioning of electronic formats must mean that the 2001 regulation included exactly that: Any content whatever its medium.

This is an extremely modern piece of legislation for times when our administrations are rapidly moving into using modern systems. This is, of course, natural and right, citizens and taxpayers deserve and need nothing but an efficient administration.

So, one would have thought that there is no point in changing the most modern wording on transparency worldwide. But the draft new regulation does exactly that, suggesting narrowing down the scope of citizens access to electronically stored information.

The attempt to limit citizens access by using the modernisation of the administration as argument against the right to access is not new – neither in the European Union nor in several of its member states.

On farm subsidies, the politically sensitive issue of revealing who gets what EU farm money, the Commission argued that member state documents once sent to the EU database in Brussels could not be accessed anymore, unless they were accessible via a 'routine operation' – a new practice, the Commission had developed.

Crucial vote

Now this practice is intended to be codified in the reform draft of the access to documents legislation.

The draft, which is being proposed for vote on Wednesday, unfortunately takes on board the Commission's new idea of only including electronically stored content, if there are available tools to retrieve them at hand.

If this idea sees the light of day, the transparency ideal will have been given up for modern administration. There is reason for slight optimism due to some of the adjustments, originally suggested by the Ombudsman and implemented into the report.

The council of ministers, who also has to vote on the reform, is split on the matter and the pro-transparency countries will not necessarily win. This means the Parliament's treatment of the issue is of even greater importance.

Its vote will be crucial in order to save transparency as we know it and to safeguard citizens access to information for the future.

The author editor of Wobbing Europe, a forum for journalists using freedom of information legislation as a research tool. 'Wobbing' is Dutch journalist slang for getting documents through Freedom of Information legislation.