Ecologistas en Acción v. European Commission

Reference :

1170/2021/OAM

Complaint date :

July 5, 2021

Status :

Final judgment

Place of jurisdiction :

European Union, Strasbourg

Plaintiffs types :

Environmental NGOs

Plaintiffs names :

Ecologistas en Acción

Defendants :

European Commission

Lawyers for Health and Environmental Justice :

No description

Case nature :

EU court

Type(s), Product(s), Active substance(s) :

Not specified

Requests :

Public access from the European Commission to documents concerning statistical data, reported by the Spanish authorities, on active substances in pesticides.

Name of the Court :

European Ombudsman of Strasbourg, European Union

Jurisdiction level :

Decision date :

March 1, 2022

Decision nature :

Partially Positive

Decision content :

The Ombudsman finds it questionable for the Commission to conclude that the principle of statistical confidentiality prevails over the transparency of information relating to emissions into the environment. She is not convinced that the Commission has given full effect to the Aarhus Regulation. However, the Ombudsman feels this case raises issues that would be best addressed by the EU legislators.

Legal basis :

Court Ruling :

Link to the ruling

Summary :

Ecologistas en Acción sought public access from the European Commission to documents concerning statistical data, reported by the authorities of Spain, on active substances in pesticides. The Commission granted access to only parts of the four documents it identified as falling under the request. It refused access to the rest, invoking exceptions under the EU's rules on public access to documents, and arguing that disclosing the redacted parts would undermine the commercial interests of companies from which the data was collected, and that the data was covered by the principle of confidentiality set out in the EU rules on statistic gathering.
Based on an inspection of the documents in question, the Ombudsman considered that the redacted information related to substances intended to be released into the environment. According to the EU rules on access to environmental information (the Aarhus Regulation) and related case-law, there is an overriding public interest in disclosing such information.

Scientific references :

No scientifice reference for this case.