Keywords

Summary



Keywords

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1. Actions for annulment ° Actionable measures ° Concept ° Acts having legal effects ° Code of Conduct concerning public access to Council and Commission documents ° Inadmissibility

(EC Treaty, Art. 173)

2. Council ° Power of internal organization ° Right of public access to Council documents ° Principle set forth in Article 22 of the Rules of Procedure and rules laid down by Decision 93/731 ° Legal basis ° Article 151(3) of the Treaty

(EC Treaty, Art. 151(3); Final Act of the Treaty on European Union, Annex 17; Rules of Procedure of the Council, Art. 22; Council Decision 93/731)

Summary

1. An action for annulment is available in the case of all measures adopted by the institutions, whatever their nature or form, which are intended to have legal effects.

The Code of Conduct concerning public access to Council and Commission documents is not such a measure. The Code of Conduct reflects the agreement reached between the Commission and the Council on the principles governing access to the documents of the two institutions, while inviting the institutions to implement those principles by means of specific regulations, and hence merely foreshadows subsequent decisions intended, for their part, to have legal effects. In so far as it traces out the general lines on the basis of which the two institutions are to adopt measures relating to the confidentiality and disclosure of papers held by them, the Code responds to the concern of the Council and the Commission to prevent major divergences in their subsequent actions in this field. Since the Code is simply the expression of purely voluntary coordination and is therefore not intended in itself to have legal effects, an action for annulment will not lie against it.

2. So long as the Community legislature has not adopted general rules on the right of public access to documents held by the Community institutions, the institutions must take measures as to the processing of requests to that effect by virtue of their power of internal organization, which authorizes them to take appropriate measures in order to ensure that their internal operation is in conformity with the interests of good administration. Such measures do not exceed the confines of the power of internal organization on the ground that they have legal effects vis-à-vis third parties.

As Community law stands at present, the Council cannot therefore be accused of having acted unlawfully where, in order to conform to the development of the law relating to public access to documents held by public authorities (which the declaration on the right of access to information, annexed (as Declaration 17) to the Final Act of the Treaty on European Union, links with the democratic nature of the institutions), on the basis of Article 151(3) of the Treaty, it provided in Article 22 of its Rules of Procedure that it would itself adopt detailed arrangements for public access to Council documents disclosure of which was without serious or prejudicial consequences, and laid down those arrangements in Decision 93/731. In particular, it cannot be accused of having misused its powers by circumventing any procedure specially provided for by the Treaty in order to deal with circumstances of this kind or of having impaired the Parliament' s prerogatives by failing to involve the Parliament in drawing up the rules which it adopted.