Brussels, 23/05/2005 (Agence Europe) - According to the 2004 annual report on the implementation of Regulation EC/1049/2001 on public access to European institutions' documents, which was approved by the General Affairs Council on Monday, virtually 60% of Council of Ministers' documents produced in 2004 were made directly accessible to the public via the web upon publication. In other words 68966 of the 116181 new documents listed in the 2004 register (http>//register.consilium.eu.int) were made directly available to citizens. In February 2005, the register contained more than half a million documents in total, 62% of which were available to the public online in a downloadable format or available upon request from the Council Secretariat. The annual report points out that there was a 62.7% rise in the number of users of the Council's public register in 2004 compared with 2003. In 2004, the Council received 2160 requests from the public for access to 12907 documents, and granted full or partial access to 85.7% of the requested documents.