European Diary: October is one of the busiest months of the year for the Council of Ministers, the main legislative body for the European Union. It is also a month in which the council decamps from its permanent seat in Brussels to Luxembourg, causing a deluge of bureaucrats and politicians to flow into the grand duchy's picturesque capital
The several hundred-strong Brussels press corps generally loathe the six-hour round trip train journeys south in pursuit of EU decision makers. The absence of coffee or snacks on the Brussels-Luxembourg line and a shortage of quality hotel beds in the city often frays tempers among journalists covering the council meetings.
So when British home secretary Charles Clarke last week refused to take some tricky media questions about the maltreatment of African migrants in Morocco seeking entry to the EU, it was hardly surprising that the press corps staged a revolt.
The European media walked out of the Justice Council press conference berating Britain, the current EU president, for a lack of transparency when it allowed just three questions on the migrants' plight at the Spanish enclave of Melilla in Morocco.
In an attempt to pacify the press pack, officials later offered up "speaking notes" at the council, at which the 25 EU justice ministers discussed both Morocco and proposed legislation on the mandatory storing of the telephone records of EU citizens.
The notes revealed that the European Commission believes there are 30,000 African migrants seeking entry to the EU through Spanish territory - a fact that could not have been reported without the notes because all council meetings are held in private.
The lack of transparency and openness at council meetings, which decide the vast majority of EU legislation that is later transposed into Irish law, also attracted the attention of the European Ombudsman last week.
In a damning report on the secrecy practised by the council, the current ombudsman P Nikiforos Diamandouros, concluded that its failure to meet publicly whenever it acts in a legislative capacity, constituted an "instance of maladministration".
"The Council of the European Union should review its refusal to decide to meet publicly whenever it is acting in its legislative capacity," wrote Mr Diamandouros in the report, which noted that a simple amendment to the council's rules of procedure would enable meetings to be held in public session.
For its part, the council argued in correspondence with the ombudsman that the publicity of meetings was a "political and institutional matter" that his office had no mandate to rule on.
Most EU observers blame national ministers' desire to avoid being shown agreeing to EU legislation that would prove controversial back in their home countries for the council's aversion to publicity.
"It would force ministers to accept responsibility for EU legislation and stop them from being able to blame the Eurocrats for everything," said one EU official yesterday.
The view of the ombudsman, who is charged with ensuring good administration at EU institutions, is relatively well known.
He has been a regular critic of the secrecy that pervades the council. However, he has little power to force the council to open up its sessions to public view and must rely on moral authority to persuade states to act.
The stalled EU constitution would have forced the council to meet in public when it deliberated and voted on legislation. It stipulated that councils should be split into two parts, legislative deliberations that could be held in public, and non-legislative activities that could be conducted in private.
However, there is no guarantee that the constitution will ever be implemented now, thereby elevating the question of transparency and openness back to the centre of the debate about the future of Europe.
Margot Wallstrom, the commissioner with responsibility for institutional relations, added her voice to the debate last week when she published the commission's Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate. In the plan she criticises the fact that council votes are not open to the public. "The European citizen is entitled to expect efficient, open and service-minded public institutions," says the strategy, which is designed to re-engage citizens on European issues.
The British presidency of the EU is currently evaluating a series of options to bring about greater transparency to council meetings with proposals due shortly.
But judging from Mr Clarke's intervention last week, it remains to be seen if member states will vote to remove the veil of secrecy that hangs over the EU's most powerful institution.