European Court of Justice grants access to documents concerning the protection of bees

16/01/25

The European Court of Justice has dismissed the appeal of the European Commission against a decision of the General Court granting access to documents concerning the Commission’s failure to adopt a guidance document for the protection of bees.

Pollinis France, an environmental NGO acting to prevent the extinction of bees, brought applications in 2020 for the disclosure of certain documents relating to the ‘Guidance Document of the European Food Safety Authority (“EFSA”) on the risk assessment of plant protection products on bees’, adopted by the EFSA on 27 June 2013 (the “Bee Guidance Document”). The applications were brought on the basis of the EU principles of transparency and openness. The Commission refused to grant access to certain documents, alleging that to do so would be to undermine the institution’s decision-making process in a matter where a decision has not yet been taken, relying on the exception in Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. The Commission was concerned to refuse access to the documents as they revealed which Member States had blocked the progress of the Bee Guidance Document.

Pollinis applied to the General Court, which annulled the Commission’s decisions and granted access to the documents. The Commission then appealed the General Court’s decision to the European Court of Justice. The ECJ held that exceptions, such as that relied upon by the Commission in Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001, derogate from the principle of the widest possible public access and must be interpreted and applied strictly. The Court found that a ‘decision-making process’ must be understood as relating directly to the taking of a decision concerning a specific matter and is not to be broadly construed as covering the entire administrative procedure or relating only to the final objective of adopting a legislative act. The Commission alleged that as the Bee Guidance Document had been sent back to EFSA for revision (following the failure to adopt the document in its 2013 form), the decision-making process was ongoing and would be undermined by the disclosure. The ECJ rejected this point and held that as the specific content of the revised Bee Guidance Document had not yet been identified, any risk that the decision-making process in relation to the revised document would be undermined by the disclosure of material concerning the original iteration of the document was purely hypothetical and could not be relied upon.

In dismissing the Commission’s appeal, the ECJ has emphasised the EU’s principles of openness and transparency and reiterated that exceptions to these principles must be construed narrowly.

The Judgment can be found here.