Summary: | The right of access to its own file represents a principle of administrative law as defined in
the legislation and jurisprudence of the European Union which constitutes a guarantee of the right t o
defence. Generally, in matters of access to files, the Court of Justice of the European Union was quite
cautious. It was decided in the case of Consten & Grundig v Commission [1966] that they have no
right of access to Commission records, only the case of Hercules Chemicals since 1991 the Court of
First Instance ruled that the access to documents and “accusing and non-accusing” the person of the
applicant must be respected by the institutions of the Union. After this point, the jurisprudence has
been constant, while guaranteeing the protection of the right of accessing its own file. However, not
all European Union institutions documents may be available to the public. On the possibility of the
Commission to bring to the attention the parties of its internal documents, the Court made it clear that
this is allowed only if exceptional circumstances of the case require so, given that there are strong
grounds for believing to be provided by the parties. Also, regarding access to documents held by
public authorities, the Court ruled that access to these documents can be justifiably limited in the case
of grounds relating to the protection of public or private interest. As regards the institutions covered
by the access to its file, it should motivate its decision. The present research aims not only at
analysing the legislation in matters of access to its own file, but also experiencing such requests for
access. It will be highlighted in the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union that the
institution is limited to just a simple examination of the information, without having the decision
motivated by an interest or reason.
|