In a judgment handed down on Thursday 5 February (case C/540/23 P), the Court of Justice of the European Union dismissed the European Commission’s appeal to set aside the judgment of the General Court of the European Union (case T-201/21 - see EUROPE 13201/42) of June 2023.
The judgment of the General Court held that the Commission’s decision (C(2021)2541) of April 2021 to refuse Covington & Burling access to documents setting out the position of 22 Member States within the European ‘Scopaff’ committee during the revision of the rules on plant species containing hydroxyanthracene derivatives (Regulation 2021/468) was unlawful under Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on access to EU documents.
Contrary to the Commission’s assertion, the regulatory framework governing comitology procedures does not protect the confidentiality of the individual positions of Member States in a request for access to documents. Furthermore, according to the Court, the Commission could not claim that the procedure for adopting the regulation (2021/468) was still underway and that disclosure of the documents would have seriously undermined its decision-making process.
See the judgment of the Court of Justice: https://aeur.eu/f/kmv (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)