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  • EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE: Major victory for openness: The General Court of the ECJ has found in favour of the NGO Access Info Europe for access to a Council document

EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE: Major victory for openness: The General Court of the ECJ has found in favour of the NGO Access Info Europe for access to a Council document

01 March 2011

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EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE: Major victory for openness: The General Court of the ECJ has found in favour of the NGO Access Info Europe for access to a Council document containing the position of Member States concerning amendments to the EU Regulation on public access to documents: Full-text of ECJ judgment (pdf). When Access Info Europe applied for the document the names of the Member States putting forward amendments - Austria, Greece, Italy, UK and Germany - were censored. Access Info Europe appealed and the Council still refused to give access so the case went to court. The Council were backed in the case by the governments of UK and Greece. The ECJ overturned the Council decision to refuse access to the full contents of the document under Article 4.3 of the Regulation on the grounds that it would "seriously undermine the institution's decision-making process". It should be noted that amendments to the Regulation on public access to documents concerns the Council of the European Union's legislative role whereby it is co-legislator with the European Parliament, see: The case for the repeal of Article 4.3

The document in question concerned discussions within the Council on amending the Regulation on public access to EU documents - the document dated 26 November 2008 was put online by Statewatch on 5 December 2008: EU doc no: 16338/08 (pdf). Much of the ECJ's judgment concerns the alleged effect of Statewatch's disclosure of the full text of the document on the Council's decision-making procedures.

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