Case T-16/25: Action brought on 10 January 2025 – IPSO v ECB
Date: 2025-01-10
Institutions: General Court
Subjects: access to EU information, committee (EU), confidentiality, disclosure of information, election, legal aid, principle of proportionality








C_202501545EN.000101.fmx.xml












Official Journal of the European Union


EN
C series













C/2025/1545


17.3.2025






Action brought on 10 January 2025 – IPSO v ECB


(Case T-16/25)

(C/2025/1545)
Language of the case: English

Parties


Applicant: International and European Public Services Organisation (IPSO) (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) (represented by: S. Pappas and A. Pappas, lawyers)

Defendant: European Central Bank

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:






—


annul the European Central Bank’s decision of 31 October 2024 rejecting the applicant’s request for public access to documents related to legal advice provided in the framework of the consultation on the amendment of the Administrative Circular 1/2019 of 23 July 2019 on election rules for elected committees (‘the contested decision’); and










—


order the defendant to bear its costs as well as the applicant’s cost for the present proceedings.





Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on the following pleas in law.






1.


First plea in law, alleging that the contested decision does not contain the necessary reasoning, as:






—


the ECB rejected the applicant’s request for access to five identified documents containing legal advice, claiming, in abstracto, that legal advice is protected under the Memorandum of Understanding between the ECB and IPSO on Recognition, Information-sharing and Consultation, as supplemented by an addendum of 23 March 2011 (‘the framework agreement’) and its guiding principles, and that disclosure of these documents constitutes an exception to the applicant’s right to be informed and consulted under the framework agreement; and










—


the ECB therefore failed to adduce the necessary reasoning for the purposes of the contested decision, thus infringing the obligation to state reasons, as enshrined in Article 296 TFEU and Article 41 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU.














2.


Second plea in law, alleging that the contested decision infringes the applicant’s right to be informed and consulted, as the contested decision erroneously concluded that legal advice is excluded from the scope of application of the framework agreement and that it is not meant for disclosure to staff representatives or the staff at large.










3.


Third plea in law, alleging, in the alternative, that the contested decision is disproportionate. Indeed, assuming its objective was to protect the legal advice contained in the five identified documents, the ECB could have, as a more proportionate solution, declared the five identified documents as confidential. In this way, it could communicate the said documents to the representatives of the applicant without risking their disclosure to the members of staff at large.






ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/1545/oj
ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)