Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2000:230
Date: 2000-10-12
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Fourth Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Provisions governing the Institutions;Free movement of goods;Customs Union;Access to documents
Concepts: Statement of reasons;Documents originating from other categories of third parties;Obligation to state reasons;Contentious procedure;Partial access
Procedure: Action for annulment - unfounded;Action for annulment - successful;Action for annulment - inadmissible
Origin: United Kingdom

Summary of the Judgment 
1. Commission — Public's right of access to Commission documents — Decision 
94/90 — Decision refusing public access to documents — Meaning — Invitation to 
make a request for access more specific — Not included — Inadmissibility of an action 
for annulment directed against an alleged refusal of access 
(Commission Decision 94/90) 
2. Commission — Public's right of access to Commission documents — Decision 
94/90 — Exceptions to the principle of access to documents — Refusal of access 
occurring without prior examination of partial access to information not covered by 
the exceptions — Not lawful 
(Commission Decision 94/90) 
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SUMMARY — CASE T-123/99 
3. Commission— Public's right of access to Commission documents — Decision 
94/90 — Limitations of the principle of access to documents — Authorship rule — 
Scope — Refusal of access to documents emanating from a non-member State 
(Commission Decision 94/90) 
4. Acts of the institutions — Statement of reasons — Obligation — Scope — Decision 
refusing public access to Commission documents 
(Art. 253 EC; Commission Decision 94/90) 
1. In the context of Decision 94/90 on 
public access to Commission docu­
ments, an invitation by the Commis­
sion, following an implicit decision 
rejecting a confirmatory application 
for access, to make the request more 
specific, in view of the large number of 
documents concerned, expressly leaves 
open the examination of the request for 
access and clearly does not exclude the 
possibility of granting access to some of 
those documents. The Commission's 
position concerning access to the docu­
ments concerned is not therefore final, 
so that an action for annulment direc­
ted against an alleged refusal to author­
ise access to those documents is inad­
missible. 
(see paras 24-26) 
2. The exceptions laid down by Decision 
94/90 on public access to Commission 
documents, which contains a code of 
conduct in that area, must be inter­
preted in the light of the principle of 
the right to information and the prin­
ciple of proportionality, so that, before 
refusing access to a document as such, 
the Commission is required to examine 
whether partial access should be 
granted, that is to say access to infor­
mation that is not covered by the 
exceptions. 
Therefore, a Commission decision 
refusing access to Community mission 
reports concerning a non-member State 
and to correspondence sent by the 
Commission to the Government of that 
State, such decision containing no 
indication that such an examination 
took place, is vitiated by manifest 
errors in the application of Decision 
94/90 and must therefore be annulled. 
(see paras 44-46, 48) 
3. Decision 94/90 on public access to 
Commission documents provides that, 
where a document held by an institu­
tion was written by a natural or legal 
person, a Member State, another Com­
munity institution or body or any other 
national or international body, the 
application must be sent direct to the 
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JTS CORPORATION V COMMISSION 
author. The authorship rule may be 
applied by the Commission when 
handling a request for access so long 
as there is no higher rule of law 
prohibiting it from excluding from the 
scope of the code of conduct docu­
ments of which it is not the author. The 
fact that Decision 94/90 refers to 
declarations of general policy, namely 
Declaration No 17 and the conclusions 
of several European Councils, does 
nothing to alter that finding, since 
those declarations do not have the 
force of a higher rule of law. 
In holding that it was not required to 
give access to certain documents that 
had been sent to it by the Government 
of a non-member State, the Commis­
sion made a correct assessment of the 
authorship rule. 
(see paras 53-54) 
4. The duty under Article 190 of the 
Treaty (now Article 253 EC) to give 
reasons for individual decisions has the 
dual purpose of, first, allowing inter­
ested parties to know the reasons 
justifying the decision taken so as to 
enable them to protect their rights and, 
secondly, 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 by reference not only to its 
wording but also to its context and the 
whole body of legal rules governing the 
matter in question. 
In the case of a request for public 
access to Commission documents, the 
Commission 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 Com­
mission, disclosure is in fact likely to 
undermine one of the aspects of the 
public interest protected by the excep­
tions laid down by the code of conduct 
adopted by Decision 94/90 on public 
access to Commission documents. 
A decision refusing access in which the 
Commission does not make clear in the 
grounds stated that it carried out an 
assessment of the documents at issue in 
the particular case does not comply 
with the above requirements and must 
therefore be annulled. 
(see paras 63-65) 
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