What the European Central Bank Knew but Would Not Tell

The European Central Bank declined to disclose what it had known about Greece's mounting debts since 2001. As the Court of Justice prepared to hear arguments for and against disclosure, other parties were able to intervene in support of either the news agency Bloomberg or the bank.

The documents at issue

The central questions, as framed by Bloomberg, were when the European Central Bank first learned that Greece was concealing the catastrophic extent of its debts, and what it knew about the quality of the collateral the Greek government used to secure loans from the bank. Gabi Thesing, a reporter at Bloomberg, held that documents existed showing what the ECB had known. The bank refused her access to two identified files, arguing that disclosure "would undermine public confidence as regards the effective conduct of economic policy in the EU and in Greece".

The General Court, previously known as the Court of First Instance, ruled in favour of the bank in November 2012. The judges concluded that it was not in the public's own interest to know how well or badly informed the ECB had been, reasoning that figures from 2010 could mislead the public and the market if they were published.

If they knew, and if they did not

From the bank's perspective, disclosure carried risk either way, and the 2012 ruling had been appealed to the Court of Justice, the supreme chamber of the EU court in Luxembourg.

• If the bank had known about the cover-up — carried out by providing false securities through agreements on future payments, known as interest-rate swaps — it might have been almost as much to blame for the crisis as the Greek government.
• If, on the other hand, the bank had not known, it could be accused of failing in its tasks and obligations as guardian of the rules of the European Economic and Monetary Union.

For Bloomberg, other news desks, pro-transparency bodies and the public in Greece, the matter went beyond a clear understanding of a few ECB manoeuvres from years earlier. Matt Winkler, editor-in-chief at Bloomberg, said when the agency brought the case to court that it was seeking full disclosure of documents showing how Greece had been able to finance itself into the predicament that became the European debt crisis, describing this as being to the benefit of the EU's member states, its citizens, its taxpayers and the financial markets. The case was closely watched alongside an earlier dispute over the same institution's records, examined in a news agency's fight over ECB secrets.

How an intervention worked

In the court case, either party could ask others for support through so-called interventions — written statements from actors with an interest in promoting a final decision one way or the other. The right to intervene is often used by EU member states, which take sides according to national or principal interest in a case, but it is not limited to states: a demonstrated interest in the outcome, explained and motivated, was enough. A template for filing an intervention was provided by Finers Stephens Innocent, the law firm acting on behalf of Gabi Thesing and Bloomberg.

Frequently asked questions