Brussels, 29/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 29 November, the European General Court ruled in Case T-590/10 that the European Central Bank (ECB) was entitled to refuse access to two documents on the economic situation in Greece because disclosure would have undermined the protection of the public interest so far as concerns the economic policy of the European Union and Greece.
Journalist Gabi Thesing and her employer, Bloomberg Finance LP, took the case to the General Court to get annulment of the ECB's decision on 21 October 2010 to refuse to grant access to two documents (entitled “The impact on government deficit and debt from off-market swaps. The Greek case”; and “The Titlos transaction and possible existence of similar transactions impacting on the euro area government debt or deficit levels”) on the economic situation in Greece (Decision 2004/258/EC). The ECB refused to grant access to the first document on the grounds that the information contained therein was outdated and could therefore deceive the financial markets at their most unstable. The second document is closely related to the first and the ECB argued that disclosure would have undermined public confidence in the effective conduct of economic policy in the EU and Greece.
The General Court ruled that the ECB had not committed an error of judgement in its belief that disclosure of the first document could have tangibly and effectively damaged the public interest vis-à-vis economic policy in the EU and in Greece because it could have misled the public and markets about the ECB's assessment of public deficit and debt, which could have had a negative impact on Greece's access to the financial markets and would therefore have affected the actual running of economic policy in Greece and the EU. The contents of the second document are closely related to the first, and the General Court ruled that for the same reasons, the ECB did not commit any error of judgement in its view that disclosure would damage economic policy in Greece and the EU. (FG/transl.fl)