Impact assessments and impact assessment reports must come under wider public access in line with the regulation (1049/2001) on access to the documents of the European institutions. Consequently, such documents are not covered by a general presumption of confidentiality, it is stated in the conclusions of Advocate General Yves Bot, delivered on Tuesday 4 September (Case C-57/16).
Supported by Finland and Sweden, the environmental defence organisation ClientEarth calls on the Court of Justice of the European Union to annul the ruling by the EU General Court on November 2015 whereby the European Commission may refuse to make documents relating to an impact assessment accessible to the public until it has presented the legislative proposal relating to those documents (Joint affairs T-424/14 and T-425/14) (see EUROPE 11430).
Yves Bot rules in the NGO’s favour and suggests that the Court annul the tribunal’s ruling. He takes the view that the documents for which the Court recognised the existence of a general presumption of confidentiality all related to either ongoing administrative or to ongoing judicial proceedings.
“The situation in the present case is quite different. What we are dealing with here is neither administrative nor judicial proceedings but a legislative process, which the EU legislature itself wants to be more open. That gives rise to precisely the right of access to documents of the institutions without which that desired openness would not exist”, the advocate general says. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)