The European Federation of Journalists said it undermined existing rights. Backers of the code conceded that there were drawbacks but insisted it was a case of the best being the enemy of the good. Calls for more freedom of information in Europe increased after the Danish rejection of the Maastricht treaty, itself seen as a peak of bureaucratic and diplomatic opacity. In 1995 John Carvel, then a Guardian correspondent in Brussels, backed by Denmark and the Netherlands, took the council of ministers to court for refusing access to documents that should have been available under its own rules, and won a knockout victory. Two years later the treaty of Amsterdam, signed by Tony Blair just weeks after taking office, called for the creation of a code of access to documents by this month - which yesterday's vote now makes possible.
Freedom of information is a highly sensitive issue.
The previous European commission, under Jacques Santer of Luxembourg, was discredited and forced to resign partly over issues of a lack of transparency. Romano Prodi, his Italian successor, has published a list of his correspondence on his website, though not the documents themselves. Britain has been praised for taking an open approach to the code, with diplomats arguing that transparency should increase the EU's popularity. This agreement overturns a controversial decision by Javier Solana, the council's foreign policy chief, to exclude whole categories of documents from public access. Mr Solana argued that Nato would be less willing to share its secrets with fledgling EU defence bodies if freedom of information procedures were too relaxed.