The complainant sought public access to final decisions by the European Commission on a series of access to document requests. The Commission refused access to these so-called 'confirmatory decisions', which are adopted by the Commission following requests for review of its initial decisions on public access to documents. It argued that the request covered too many documents, which would be not be possible to assess in the applicable time limit and would involve a disproportionate use of administrative resources. The complainant argued that, if the Commission proactively published confirmatory decisions, there would be no burden. 

Based on the complaint, the Ombudsman opened an inquiry into the more general failure by the Commission to make public proactively all confirmatory decisions. As a first step, she asked the Commission to give its view on the matter.