Ecologistas en Acción v. European Commission

1170/2021/OAM
July 5, 2021
Final judgment
European Union, Strasbourg

Environmental NGOs
Ecologistas en Acción
European Commission
No description

EU court
Not specified
Public access from the European Commission to documents concerning statistical data, reported by the Spanish authorities, on active substances in pesticides.
European Ombudsman of Strasbourg, European Union

March 1, 2022
Partially Positive
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.

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.