Keywords

Summary



Keywords

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)

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)

Summary

1. In the context of Decision 94/90 on public access to Commission documents, an invitation by the Commission, 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 documents concerned is not therefore final, so that an action for annulment directed against an alleged refusal to authorise access to those documents is inadmissible.

( 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 interpreted in the light of the principle of the right to information and the principle 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 information 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 institution was written by a natural or legal person, a Member State, another Community institution or body or any other national or international body, the application must be sent direct to the 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 documents 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 Commission 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 interested 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 satisfies 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 Commission, disclosure is in fact likely to undermine one of the aspects of the public interest protected by the exceptions 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 )