The Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that documents used by the European Commission as a basis for decision-making must be made public.
In 2003, the EU decided that legislation was necessary for better access to justice in environmental matters. Due to resistance amongst some Member States, no concrete progress was made over a decade.
In 2014 ClientEarth, a non-profit environmental organisation, requested two impact assessments: the first a report on the implementation of the ‘access to justice’ pillar of the Aarhus Convention, and the second on the revision of the EU legal framework on environmental inspections and surveillance at national and EU level. These requests were refused by the Commission which stated that the documents were part of an on-going assessment and their release could undermine the decision-making process. ClientEarth sought to annul these decisions, although this was rejected by the EU General Court on the basis that the documents fell into the exceptions provided for in the EU Regulation on public access to documents.
The Grand Chamber, however, has found that since impact assessments are important for the legislative process, they should be made public as soon as possible – and not only once legislative proposals are tabled. The Court stated that “Although the submission of a legislative proposal by the Commission is, at the impact assessment stage, uncertain, the disclosure of those documents is likely to increase the transparency and openness of the legislative process as a whole, in particular the preparatory steps of that process, and, thus, to enhance the democratic nature of the European Union by enabling its citizens to scrutinise that information and to attempt to influence that process.”
The Grand Chamber also rejected the argument that the Commission would face pressure from third parties, the Commission having “not shown that such pressure would impede it to act in a fully independent manner and exclusively in the general interest and insisted that there was no obligation to respond in each case to the remarks it may receive.”
Click here for Grand Chamber decision of ClientEarth v The European Commission.