In a judgment handed down on Wednesday 28 September (case T-174/21), the General Court of the European Union rejected the appeal of the Czech holding company Agrofert against the European Parliament’s decision to deny it access to two documents in the context of an investigation into the misuse of EU funds and potential conflicts of interest by Agrofert, which was set up by Andrej Babiš, the former Czech Prime Minister (see EUROPE 12738/2).
In particular, the General Court is of the opinion that the applicant has lost its interest in bringing proceedings to secure the publication of a final report on an audit by the European Commission of the management and control systems in place in the Czech Republic, to avoid conflicts of interest. In the meantime, the Commission had indeed decided to release a public version of the report in order to protect personal data and trade secrets. Annulling the European Parliament’s initial decision not to make the audit report public would not have the effect of making the protected data public, the General Court notes.
The Parliament also refused Agrofert access to a letter from the Commission to the Czech Prime Minister, on the basis of the exception relating to the protection of the purpose of inspections, investigations and audits in Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to documents of the EU institutions.
According to the General Court, the conditions for refusing access to this letter were met, as the purpose of the Commission’s investigative activity continued beyond the sending of the letter, in particular through subsequent exchanges with the Member State concerned. Moreover, according to the judge, disclosure of the Commission’s letter could undermine the investigation, as the then Czech Prime Minister Babiš was directly involved in the case. And to reject the existence of an overriding public interest justifying the disclosure of the Commission’s letter, the interest relied upon by Agrofert being a private interest.
See the General Court’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/3ab (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)