Brussels, 22/09/2010 (Agence Europe) - In a ruling delivered on Tuesday 21 September, the Court of Justice of the EU rejected the appeals brought by Sweden and the International Press Association (IPA) (Cases C-514/07 P and C-528/07 P) and by the Commission (Case C-532/07 P), and upheld the General Court judgment of 12 September 2007 which in part overturned the Commission decision of 20 November 2003 to refuse access to certain documents which it had lodged with the Court of Justice. The Court is, thus, detailing its case law on exceptions for reasons of the protection of privacy and data, and of the purposes of the investigations governed by Regulation 1049/2001 on public access to documents of the institutions.
The facts go back to August 2003, when the IPA, on the basis of the above-mentioned regulation, sought access to all the written submissions made by the Commission in a number of cases before the General Court. In a decision on 20 November 2003, the Commission refused to grant access to most of these documents, citing exceptions allowed if disclosure might adversely affect the pending court proceedings or the purposes of the investigations (Article 4 of the regulation). Ruling on the case lodged by the IPA, on 12 September 2007, the General Court partially overturned the Commission decision (Case T-36/04, see EUROPE 9502) since it denied access to submissions relating to the nine cases at issue. The General Court took the view that, when legal proceedings relate to a case yet to be heard, the Commission can refuse to disclose its submissions without concretely examining their content. Sweden and IPA (Case C-514/07 P) appealed against this decision, calling for it to be overturned in part insofar as it had not completey reversed the Commission decision and had upheld the Commission's right not to disclose documents in cases waiting to be heard.
On this point, the Court of Justice confirmed that, when oral arguments have not been heard in a case, the exception on court proceedings (as mentioned in Article 4 of the regulation) applies without the institutions having to concretely examine every document requested. In this, it recognises that there is a general presumption that disclosure of the documents submitted by an institution as part of court proceedings adversely affects the protection of those proceedings under the meaning of Regulation 1049/2001 so long as the proceedings are pending. Taking court proceedings out of the scope of the right to access to documents, without distinction of the various stages of the procedure, is justified by the need to ensure that, throughout the legal procedure, debate between the parties and the deliberations of the court in the case being heard is conducted serenely, the Court decided. The Commission was, then, within its rights to refuse access to the submissions requested.
However, the Court ruled that, after the arguments have been heard, the Commission must examine every document requested individually to check, on the basis of their specific content, whether they may be freely consulted or whether disclosure would adversely affect court proceedings in the case. The Court ruled that the General Court had not made an error in law placing this requirement on the Commission.
The Court also stated that the General Court, in its ruling, had balanced the interest of applying the general principle of transparency and pursuit of the aim of ensuring that court cases can proceed without external influence. The Court decided that, in the cases examined, the General Court had rightly deemed that the principle of transparency was not of such great importance that it could justify disclosure of the documents in the name of some “higher interest” no matter the adverse effect this might bring to court proceedings and the need to protect contentious documents. Consequently, the “higher public interest” that documents be disclosed, invoked by the IPA - which restricted itself to invoking the public's right to be informed on important issues of Community law, particularly on competition - was not sufficient to justify disclosure of the Commission submissions. Thus, no concrete examination of the content of these documents was needed in this instance. The Court, therefore, rejected the appeals. (F.G./transl.rt)