Source: https://eulaw.typepad.com/eulawblog/transparency/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 18:16:31+00:00

Document:
The Commission released its annual report on transparency for the year 2008.
You can read the document - COM(2009) 331 final - here.
It makes interesting reading. One would get the impression from reading the judgments of the Court of First Instance that the Commission refuses access to documents. That of course would be a false impression as only refusals are challenged. It appears from the 2008 report that the total number of applications for public access (5197) has increased by over a thousand in one year. The number of positive responses granting access has also increased in 2008: 82.68% of the responses were positive (as compared to 72.71 % in 2007).
As in 2007, roughly a third of the requests came from academics.
We noted last year's report is available here.
The EU's Office of Publications has set up a neat, web-based, directory of EU legislation in preparation.
You can consult it at the link here.
The only thing is that it does not seem to be kept up to date on a daily basis. But still, it is much better than nothing, which was the situation before.
The Commission as recently made public its report on transparency in 2007. You can download the document - COM (2008) 630 final - here.
The report is a valuable overview of all the activities of the Commission in the field of freedom of information and of its activities in applying Regulation 1049/2001. A summary of the pending court cases is provided.
What is striking is the increase in number of requests for documents which in 2007 totalled 4196 (up from 3841 in 2006), of which 72% received an initial response granting the full access to the documents requested. 273 confirmatory requests were made in 2007, and in 15% of those cases (in which access to the documents was denied, obviously) full access was granted (up from 8.57% in 2006 !).
About a third of the requests are made by academics.
For the previous report, covering 2006, see here.
Hot on the heels of the judgment of the Court of Justice in Joined Cases C-39/05 P and C-52/05 P Sweden and Turco v Council (noted here) in which the Court held that greater access to documents should be granted if they relate to the legislative activities of the institutions, the Court of First Instance recently held in Case T-403/05 MyTravel Group v. Commission that a more extensive interpretation of the exceptions to public access to documents is justified if the documents concerned their administrative activities.
By the same token, the Court of First Instance held that public access granted under Regulation No 1049/2001 was not tantamount to a form of discovery: The fact that the applicant requesting the documents needed them to support a claim in damages against the Commission did not confer any greater interest or right to obtain the documents under Regulation No 1049/2001.
The judgment is quite interesting too because the Court of First Instance interprets the exception concerning the preservation of the "decision making process" under Article 4(3), second subparagraph and the protection of "court proceedings and legal advice" under Article 4(2), second indent of Regulation 1049/2001 for the first time in relation to documents drafted for internal use in the context of an administrative procedure.
This is the story. In 2002 the Court of First Instance forcefully annulled the Commission's decision prohibiting a merger in Case T-342/99 Airtours v. Commission. Following that judgment the Commission established an internal working group to examine whether an appeal against the judgment was appropriate and to review the implications of the judgment for the administrative merger procedures or other competition procedures. An internal report was drawn up. In June 2003 Airtours (renamed My Travel) brought an action for damages in Case T-212/03 against the Commission to obtain compensation for the loss it claimed to have suffered as a result of the initial prohibition decision (more about that judgment in a later post). To support its action for damages, My Travel requested access to the report of the Working Group and other internal documents under Regulation 1049/2001. The Commission granted full or partial access to some working papers but refused access to report of the Working Group and the remainder of the documents requested.
The Commission's refusal under Regulation 1049/2001 was based on the exceptions of the protection of the decision making process (Article 4(3) second subparagraph), the protection of the purpose of the investigations (Article 4(2) third indent) and the protection of court proceedings and legal advice (Article 4(2) second indent).
The Court of First Instance basically upheld the Commission's refusal.
The Court held that the interest of the public in obtaining access to documents does not carry the same weight in the case of administrative proceedings - antitrust procedures in particular - as in the case of legislative proceedings. It held that the risk of the Commission's decision-making process being seriously undermined, if internal documents were made public, was reasonably foreseeable and not purely hypothetical. The Court took account of the right of the Commissioner for Competition to obtain candid and complete opinions from the bureaucratic services and of the fact that making public preparatory documents would risk seriously undermining the decision-making freedom of the Commission.
The Court gave a fairly broad meaning to the exception relating to the exception concerning the protection of court proceedings and legal advice. It held that disclosure of the notes of the Commission's legal service could lead the legal service to display reticence and caution in the future in the drafting of such notes in order not to affect the Commission’s decision-making capacity in areas in which it is involved in its administrative capacity. Furthermore, the Court confirmed that disclosure of that advice would risk putting the Commission in an invidious position in which its legal service might have to defend a position before the Court which was not the same as the position it had taken internally in its advisory capacity.
All in all, a surprisingly expansive view of the exceptions to public access to documents.
The Court of Justice in Joined Case C-39/05 P and C-52/05 P Sweden and Turco v Council overruled a judgment of the Court of First Instance refusing to give public access to a document of the Council's Legal service containing legal advice.
It seems that the Court of Justice has been reading up on Sir Isaiah Berlin and pluralism.
What happened was that Mr Turco asked the Council for access to the documents appearing on the agenda of the ‘Justice and Home Affairs’ Council meeting, including an opinion of the Council’s legal service on a proposal for a directive laying down minimumstandards for the reception of applicants for asylum in Member States. The Council refused to disclose the legal opinion on the ground that it deserved special protection so as not to create uncertainty regarding the legality of the measure adopted further to that opinion.
Mr Turco then challenged the Council's refusal before the Court of First Instance. That court upheld the Council decision in its judgment in Case T-84/03 Turco v Council. The Court of First Instance held that disclosure of legal opinions such as the one requested could give rise to lingering doubts as to the lawfulness of legislative acts to which such advice related and could also compromise the independence of the opinions of the Council’s legal service. The Court of First Instance held that the overriding public interest in disclosure must be distinct from the principles underlying Regulation No 1049/2001, in particular the principle of openness, relied on by Mr Turco.
Finally, Mr Turco and Sweden both appealed that judgment to the Court of Justice.
The Court of Justice held that the reasons advanced by the Council and upheld by the Court of First Instance for withholding legal advice from public gaze were wrong.
It held, first, as regards the fear expressed by the Council that disclosure of an opinion of its legal service relating to a legislative proposal could lead to doubts as to the lawfulness of the legislative act concerned, it is precisely openness in this regard that contributes to conferring greater legitimacy on the institutions in the eyes of European citizens and increasing their confidence in them by allowing different points of view to be openly debated. It is in fact rather a lack of information and debate which is capable of giving rise to doubts in the minds of citizens, not only as regards the lawfulness of an isolated act, but also as regards the legitimacy of the decision-making process as a whole.
The Court continued that the risk that doubts might be engendered in the minds of European citizens as regards the lawfulness of an act adopted by the EC legislature because the Council’s legal service had given an unfavorable opinion would more often than not fail to arise if the statement of reasons for that act was reinforced, so as to make it apparent why that unfavourable opinion was not followed.
Thus, the Court found that to submit, in a general and abstract way, that there is a risk that disclosure of legal advice relating to legislative processes may give rise to doubts regarding the lawfulness of legislative acts does not suffice to establish that the protection of legal advice will be undermined for the purposes of the second indent of Article 4(2) of Regulation No 1049/2001 and cannot, accordingly, provide a basis for a refusal to disclose such advice.
The Council also submitted that public disclosure of its advice would erode the independence of its lawyers because pressure would be put on them by their political masters to change the advice. The Court dismissed that argument too. It held that, as regards the risk of pressure being applied to influence the content of opinions issued by the Council’s legal service, even if the members of that legal service were subjected to improper pressure to that end, it would be that pressure, and not the possibility of the disclosure of legal opinions, which would compromise that institution’s interest in receiving frank, objective and comprehensive advice and it would clearly be incumbent on the Council to take the necessary measures to put a stop to it. The risk of affecting the independence of legal advice should be weighed against the overriding public interests which underlie Regulation No 1049/2001. Such an overriding public interest is constituted by the fact that disclosure of documents containing the advice of an institution’s legal service on legal questions arising when legislative initiatives are debated increases the transparency and openness of the legislative process and strengthens the democratic right of European citizens to scrutinize the information which has formed the basis of a legislative act, as referred to, in particular, in recitals 2 and 6 of the preamble to Regulation No 1049/2001.
The Court did state that legal advice could be kept secret in some circumstances. The advice may be of a particularly sensitive nature or having a particularly wide scope that goes beyond the context of the legislative process in question. In such a case, it is incumbent on the institution concerned to give a detailed statement of reasons for such a refusal.
There's an obvious tension between transparency and privacy. Now the Court of First Instance has stepped right into the fight and sided categorically with transparency. In its recent judgment in Case T-194/04 The Bavarian Lager Co. Ltd. v. Commission the Court of First Instance renders almost nugatory the protection afforded by Regulation 45/2001 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the EC institutions.
The story goes like this. The Commission commenced Article 226 EC proceedings against the United Kingdom because of some legislation in force at the time that restricted the import of foreign beer. The Commission, with a view to finding a satisfactory solution to the case, organized a meeting with British government officials and trade representatives. Ultimately, a solution was reached and the case closed. But then, an importer of German beer wanted to know the names of the individuals who attended the meeting. For what purpose you may well ask. The Commission asked the individuals concerned whether they agreed to have their names revealed. Five of those attendees, no doubt fearing retribution or harassment by the importer, refused to have their identity revealed. The Ombudsman got involved and handed down a scathing report denouncing the Commission for not revealing the identity of those who had refused to have their names disclosed, claiming they had no right to privacy. The Article 29 Working Party then handed down a report in response (but the Court of First Instance pays scant attention to that inconvenient truth). The German importer made a request for the minutes of the meeting with the names of attendees included under Regulation 1049/2001 (the public access to documents regulation). The Commission refused to disclose the names invoking data protection and the terms of Regulation 45/2001. The importer then challenged the Commission's refusal before the Court of First Instance.
The Court of First Instance annulled the Commission's refusal. The judgment must be read to be believed.
The Court held that the list of participants in the minutes contained personal data, since the persons who participated at that meeting could be identified there. Notwithstanding the fact that it was personal data, it was not protected by Regulation 45/2001 because the mere fact that a document contains such data does not necessarily mean that the privacy or integrity of the persons concerned is affected, even though professional activities are not in principle excluded from the concept of "private life".
It also held that the privacy and integrity of a person is not compromised even if personal data relating to that person is revealed. As a consequence, any objection by such a person to disclosure of the personal data cannot prevent disclosure under Regulation 1049/2001.
What was quite extraordinary was the way in which the European Data Protection Supervisor intervened to plead that the very regulation that established his office did not apply, referring to his "paper" on public access to documents and data protection.
It's a litigious world out there. Even a decision to publish a decision can be the object of an action for annulment. And be annulled, as in Case T-474/04 Pergan Hilfsstoffe für industrielle Prozesse GmbH v. Commission.
In its judgment in Case T-474/04 the Court of First Instance annulled a decision of the Commission, taken by the antitrust Hearing Officer, to publish a decision finding antitrust violations containing references to the applicant, Pergan.
That sounds a bit weird. So here's the story. The Commission took a decision on 10 December 2003 (the peroxides decision) imposing fines on five undertakings for their participation in cartels on the market for organic peroxides. But the Commission did not fine Pergan nor did it find that it had breached the antitrust rules in the operative part of the decision. The Commission found that the proceedings against Pergan were time barred and that there was no need to refer to Pergan's participation in the infringement in the operative part of the peroxides decision, or to address the decision to it. The Commission did refer to Pergan in the grounds of the decision and described its alleged role in the cartels.
The Commission informed Pergan of the decision and sent it a copy informing it of its intention to publish a non-confidential version. Pergan then requested that all references to it be removed from the version to be published. That request was submitted to the Commission’s hearing officer. The hearing officer refused to remove from the definitive version the majority of the references made to Pergan on the ground that they were not business secrets.
Pergan then applied to the Court of First Instance to have the hearing officer's decision annulled.
The Court of First Instance agreed with Pergan and annulled the decision.
It held that the Commission had applied the obligation to respect professional secrecy in Article 287 EC too narrowly. The scope of that obligation went beyond protecting business secrets. According to the Court of First Instance, the protection of professional secrecy encompasses the principle of presumption of innocence. That presumption precludes any formal finding and even any allusion to the liability of an accused person for a particular infringement in a decision bringing the administrative procedure to an end, unless that person has been able to challenge the substance of that decision. Because the operative part of the peroxides decision did not refer to it, Pergan could not and in fact did not challenge the peroxide decision itself.
The Court further held that, since the Commission’s findings relating to an infringement committed by an undertaking are capable of infringing the principle of the presumption of innocence, those findings must, in principle, be regarded as confidential as regards the public, and therefore as being of the kind covered by the obligation of professional secrecy. That principle stems from the need to respect the reputation and dignity of the person concerned as that person has not been finally found guilty of an infringement (see, by analogy, Case T‑15/02 BASF v. Commission , paragraph 604). The confidentiality of such information is confirmed by Article 4(1)(b) of Regulation No 1049/2001, which provides that information, whose disclosure would harm the protection of privacy and the integrity of the individual, is to be protected.
The Commission has published its annual report on the application of Regulation 1049/2001 on public access to its documents.
The report - COM(2007)548 final - that has just appeared covers the activities of the Commission in 2005. And it is the fourth such report. The last report, covering 2004, was published in 2005.
The report contains a useful summary of Ombudsman complaints, judgments of the Court of First Instance and cases pending before the Court of First Instance. There is also a statistical annex which shows that there were 3 173 initial requests for documents in 2005, up from 2 600 in 2004. Most requests are granted at the initial stage (68%), 23.5 % of initial refusals are partially revised and 8% revised in full at the confirmatory stage. The most popular area is that of antitrust (12.7 %) and only 1.24% of requests come from persons from non-European countries. Not a single request from the USA in 2005 !
What a plethora of judgments and orders today! Let us just take them one by one, starting with the judgment of the Court of First Instance, Grand Chamber no less, finding that the Commission was wrong to refuse to disclose certain pleadings lodged before the EC courts to the public.
In its judgment in Case T-36/04 API v. Commission the Court of First Instance mostly upheld the claim by a group of journalists that public access should be granted to pleadings which the Commission had lodged in certain cases before the Court of First Instance itself and before the Court of Justice.
Regulation 1049/2001 grants members of the public a general right of access to documents of the institutions. But it provides for exceptions to that general principle, in particular where disclosure of a document would undermine the protection of court proceedings or the purpose of investigations, unless there is an overriding public interest in disclosure.
API, a group of foreign journalists based in Belgium, asked the Commission for access to all the written submissions made by the Commission to the Court of First Instance or the Court of Justice in a number of cases. The Commission granted access to the pleadings in preliminary reference cases but refused to disclose the pleadings in direct actions. It justified the refusal on the grounds that in some cases disclosure would adversely affect the pending court proceedings, harming inter alia its position as a party and the serenity of the debate. It also refused to grant access in a case that was closed because disclosure of its pleadings would adversely affect other proceedings, which were still pending. It refused to disclose the pleadings in infringement cases because, even though those cases had been closed by judgments of the Court of Justice finding that the member States concerned had failed to fulfil their obligations, those States had not yet complied with the judgments, so negotiations were still in progress to bring the infringements to an end. Accordingly, disclosure could prejudice the investigations relating to those infringements.
The Court of First Instance largely disagreed with the Commission and partially (but mostly) annulled its decision refusing access. It held that when a case had reached the stage of the oral hearing, for which a report for the hearing is produced and is available to the public, the Commission could no longer invoke an exception to the general right of public access, such as the protection of court proceedings or the purpose of investigations, for whole categories of documents. The Commission, the Court held, had to justify any refusal in respect of each document.
But the Court of First Instance did uphold the Commission's refusal to disclose pleadings in respect of cases that were still pending and which had not yet reached the oral procedure at the time of the request.
Of course, the judgment is a bit more complicated than that and you should read the whole thing. The Court has also put out a good press release that gives more detail.

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