62024CJ0129_RES
Case C‑129/24
Coillte Cuideachta Ghníomhaíochta Ainmnithe
v
Commissioner for Environmental Information
(Request for a preliminary ruling from the High Court (Ireland))
Judgment of the Court (Fifth Chamber) of 15 January 2026
(Reference for a preliminary ruling – Environment – Aarhus Convention – Directive 2003/4/EC – Public access to environmental information – Concepts of ‘applicant’ and ‘request’ – Anonymous applicants or applicants using pseudonyms – Right of access to environmental information – Practical arrangements – Obligation for applicants to provide their actual name and a current physical address – Invalidity of the request)
Environment – Right of access to information – Directive 2003/4 – Applicant for environmental information – Obligation for the applicant to identify him or herself by his or her actual name and/or current physical address – No such obligation – National legislation requiring such identification of the applicant – Whether permissible – Conditions – Respect for the principles of equivalence and effectiveness
(Aarhus Convention, Arts 2(4) and 4; European Parliament and Council Directive 2003/4, Art. 2(5))
(see paragraphs 27-44, operative part)
Résumé
Ruling on a request for a preliminary ruling, the Court clarifies the concept of ‘request for access to environmental information’ within the meaning of Directive 2003/4, (
1
) read in the light of the Aarhus Convention, (
2
) and adjudicates on whether a public authority may deem such a request invalid on the ground that the applicant has failed to comply with national legislation requiring him or her to indicate his or her actual name and/or current physical address.
Between March and June 2022, Coillte Cuideachta Ghníomhaíochta Ainmnithe (‘Coillte’), a commercial forestry undertaking partly owned by the Irish State, received 97 requests for access to environmental information from anonymous applicants or applicants using pseudonyms, without a physical address being provided.
The national legislation transposing Directive 2003/4 provides that any person making a request for access to environmental information must indicate his or her actual name and/or address. Taking the view that the anonymous or pseudonymised requests were not genuinely seeking to elicit environmental information, but were part of an organised campaign engaged in for questionable motives such as disrupting its operations, Coillte asked the applicants concerned to provide it with their current addresses and to confirm that, in those requests, they had used their real legal names. Having received no response, it essentially rejected those requests as invalid.
The applicants concerned then requested Coillte to carry out an internal review of those rejection decisions. That undertaking again asked those applicants to confirm or indicate their legal names and to provide it with their current addresses. That information not having been provided, the requests for internal review were rejected as invalid.
Of those rejection decisions, 81 were the subject of administrative appeals to the Commissioner for Environmental Information (Ireland). Ruling on the first 58 cases of rejection, the Commissioner adopted a decision finding that Coillte had not been justified in treating the requests for environmental information concerned as invalid.
Coillte brought an appeal against that decision before the High Court (Ireland), the referring court. That court referred questions to the Court for a preliminary ruling seeking to ascertain, in essence, whether the concept of ‘applicant’, within the meaning of Article 2(5) of Directive 2003/4, read in the light of the Aarhus Convention, must be interpreted as meaning that it requires a natural or legal person to be identified by his or her actual name and/or a current physical address and, if not, whether it precludes national legislation which requires such identification of the applicant.
Findings of the Court
The Court begins by pointing out that Directive 2003/4 does not make the status of ‘applicant’ subject to the identification of the natural or legal person requesting environmental information by indicating his or her actual name and/or his or her current physical address, meaning that the Member States are not under the obligation to require such identification.
That absence of an obligation is not called into question by the objectives pursued by Directive 2003/4, namely, first, to guarantee the right of access to environmental information held by or for public authorities and to set out the basic terms and conditions of, and practical arrangements for, its exercise and, second, to ensure that, as a matter of course, environmental information is progressively made available and disseminated to the public.
That being so, the Court notes that Directive 2003/4 does not require the public authorities to make environmental information held by them or on their behalf available to any entity other than a natural or legal person. Nor does that directive require those authorities, after having given a natural or legal person access to that information, to give access to the said information, within a very short period of time, following a significant number of identical requests made by that natural or legal person. Such requests are liable to affect the effectiveness of access to environmental information of other natural or legal persons, given that the public authorities do not have unlimited resources.
Accordingly, in the absence of provisions of EU law defining more precisely the practical arrangements for access to environmental information, it is for the Member States to define in their respective legal systems detailed rules for ensuring that requests for access to environmental information are actually made by natural and legal persons and do not constitute requests such as those referred to above.
The Court specifies, however, that those detailed rules must not be less favourable than those governing similar situations subject to domestic law (principle of equivalence) or make it impossible in practice or excessively difficult to exercise rights conferred by EU law (principle of effectiveness). In this case, the Court has no doubts as to the conformity of the national legislation at issue with the principle of equivalence. In addition, disclosing the actual name and/or current physical address of the applicant concerned does not make it impossible in practice or excessively difficult to exercise the right of access to environmental information conferred by EU law.
In those circumstances, the Court concludes that national legislation may require that any person making a request for access to environmental information within the meaning of Directive 2003/4 be identifiable by the public authority to which such a request is made, by name, address and any other relevant contact information, in compliance with the principles of equivalence and effectiveness.
(
1
)	Directive 2003/4/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 January 2003 on public access to environmental information and repealing Council Directive 90/313/EEC (OJ 2003 L 41, p. 26).
(
2
)	Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, signed in Aarhus on 25 June 1998 and approved on behalf of the European Community by Council Decision 2005/370/EC of 17 February 2005 (OJ 2005 L 124, p. 1; ‘the Aarhus Convention’).