As EU leaders discussed pension reforms, citizens were not meant to see the arguments behind the debate. A report that the Council in Brussels kept secret — but which was released in one member state — showed that governments wanted to bend the bloc's Euro-rules.
When heads of state and government met in Brussels in December, they received a report on the thorny question of privatising pension systems. The report was referred to in the official conclusions of the meeting, but there was no link to it and no document number, and it remained held back by the Council administration in Brussels. Letting its content be known would impede the discussions, ran the argument. The Swedish government subsequently released the same report, making it possible to gain some insight into the matter.
Countries on the brink of privatising their pension systems were reluctant to do so for fear of being punished under the Euro-rules governing their economic performance. When pension assets are moved from the state to the private sector, a government's deficit and debt grow. Hence a dilemma: the EU encouraged privatisation in general, but privatised pension systems weakened a country's ability to follow the rules known as the Stability and Growth Pact. Two EU countries had in fact made the reverse move — Hungary, and to some extent Bulgaria, nationalised private pension funds in order to reduce their deficit and debt.
One way out of the dilemma would be to bend the rules, letting a country's deficit grow beyond the official ceiling of 3 percent of GNP if the excess could be excused by pension reforms. This was the core of the report that the Council wanted to keep from the public.
The reason given for secrecy
The reason given for the refusal was that "(...) disclosure of this document which contains opinions for internal use as part of deliberations and preliminary consultations within the Council would be premature in that it could impede the proper conduct of the negotiations and compromise the conclusion of an agreement on this subject."
No national positions in the document
When documents are kept secret because they form part of ongoing deliberations, they usually contain national positions — Germany opposes this, Italy is in favour of that. That was not the case here: no national positions were identified in the report. The only opinions mentioned were that "a majority" considered a suggestion proposed by the Commission to be sufficient, while "some" member states believed it went too far, and "others" sought assurances on the application of the proposed rules. In plain terms, there was a split over how far member states should be allowed to break the Euro-rules in order to privatise pension systems.
A confirmatory application to the Council
The Swedish government found no reason to withhold the document; the Council in Brussels did. After an initial rejection, a confirmatory application — a formal request asking the Council to reconsider a refusal regarded as poorly justified — was submitted. In a letter, the General Secretariat of the Council said that "various Council bodies" were involved in the application and that a decision would be taken at a later stage.