Brussels, 03/08/2012 (Agence Europe) - The 2012 annual report on public access to documents, released on 3 August, shows 6,447 requests were made for European Commission documents in 2011, compared with 6,361 in 2010. In 2001, when the current rules came into force, just 450 requests were received. 2011's relatively small increase compared to previous years suggests that requests are starting to stabilise, the Commission says, perhaps as the right to access documents becomes firmly established in the public mind. Another factor may be the ever increasing size of the Commission's permanent public register of documents, making ad hoc requests less necessary, it proffers. Another 19,956 documents were added to the public register in 2011, a 7% increase on the 18,661 documents added to the register in 2010. In 2011, taxation and customs union overtook competition as the most popular policy area for document requests. (EH/transl.rt)