Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2000:101
Date: 2000-04-06
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Fourth Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Provisions governing the Institutions;Access to documents;Acts of the institutions
Concepts: Statement of reasons;Obligation to state reasons;Administrative procedure;Partial access
Procedure: Action for annulment - successful
Origin: Netherlands

Summary of the Judgment 
1. Acts of the institutions — Statement of reasons — Obligation — Scope — Decision 
refusing public access to an institution's documents 
(EC Treaty, Art. 190 (now Art. 253 EC); Council Decision 93/731, Art. 4(1» 
2. Acts of the institutions — Statement of reasons — Obligation — Scope — Decision 
confirming an initial decision 
(EC Treaty, Art. 190 (now Art. 253 EC)) 
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SUMMARY — CASE T-188/98 
3. Council — Right of public access to Council documents •— Decision 93/731 — 
Exceptions to the principle of access to documents — Protection of the public 
interest — Obligation to grant access to information not covered by the exception — 
Scope 
(Council Decision 93/731, Art. 4(1}) 
1. The duty to give reasons for a decision, 
resulting from Article 190 of the Treaty 
(now Article 253 EC), has two pur­
poses: to allow interested parties to 
know the justification for the measure 
so as to enable them to protect their 
rights and to enable the Community 
judicature to exercise its power to 
review the legality of the decision. 
Whether a statement of reasons satis­
fies those requirements is a question to 
be assessed with reference not only to 
its wording but also to its context and 
the whole body of legal rules governing 
the matter in question. 
When an application is made for access 
to Council documents, the Council is 
obliged to consider, in the case of each 
document to which access is sought, 
whether, in the light of the information 
available to the Council, disclosure is 
in fact likely to undermine one of the 
facets of public interest protected by 
Article 4(1) of Decision 93/731 on 
public access to Council documents. 
A decision in which the Council con­
fined itself to indicating that certain 
documents contained sensitive infor­
mation disclosure of which to the 
public would damage the European 
Union's relations with the countries 
concerned does not satisfy the above 
requirements and must be annulled. 
First, it is not clear from the statement 
of reasons for that decision that the 
Council had examined each of the 
documents individually, however 
briefly, or even in groups having the 
same essential features. Second, in 
respect of certain other documents, no 
reasons were put forward which would 
have enable the applicant to under­
stand why there was a risk that dis­
closure might have a detrimental 
impact on the EU's relations with third 
countries. 
(see paras 36-37, 41-42, 48) 
2. Where an institution rejects an applica­
tion for access to documents, giving 
reasons, and the applicant submits a 
confirmatory application with a view 
to having that rejection reconsidered 
and it is rejected on the same grounds 
as before, it is appropriate to consider 
the sufficiency of the reasons in the 
light of all the exchanges between the 
institution and the applicant, taking 
into account also the information that 
the applicant had available. Whilst the 
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KUIJER V COUNCIL 
context in which a decision is adopted 
may make the requirements to be 
satisfied by the institution as regards 
the statement of reasons lighter, it may, 
conversely, also make them more strin­
gent in certain circumstances. That is 
the case where, during the procedure in 
which application is made for access to 
documents, the applicant puts forward 
factors capable of casting doubt on 
whether the first refusal was well 
founded. In those circumstances, the 
requirements governing the statement 
of reasons mean that the institution is 
obliged, when replying to a confirma­
tory application, to state why those 
factors are not such as might warrant a 
change in its position. Otherwise, the 
applicant would not be able to under­
stand the reasons for which the author 
of the reply to the confirmatory appli­
cation has decided to confirm the 
refusal on the same grounds. 
(see paras 44-46) 
3. The exception concerning the protec­
tion of the public interest provided for 
in Article 4(1) of Decision 93/731 on 
public access to Council documents 
must be interpreted in the light of the 
principle of the right to information 
and the principle of proportionality. It 
follows that the Council is obliged to 
examine whether partial access should 
be granted to the information not 
covered by the exceptions. Moreover, 
the principle of proportionality would 
allow the Council, in particular cases 
where the size of the document or the 
passages to be removed would give rise 
to an unreasonable amount of admin­
istrative work, to balance the interest 
in public access to those fragmentary 
parts against the burden of work so 
caused. The Council could thus, in 
those particular cases, safeguard the 
interests of good administration. 
(see paras 54-55) 
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