The complainants in these two cases asked the European Commission to give public access to a draft impact assessment report on the revision of the Food Information to Consumers Regulation, a related opinion of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, and the minutes of related meetings. While the Commission disclosed certain documents concerning the meetings, it refused to disclose most of the requested documents. In doing so, it invoked an exception under the EU legislation on public access to documents, arguing that disclosure could undermine an ongoing decision-making process.

The complainants asked the Commission to review its position and issue ‘confirmatory decisions’. After the Commission failed to do so within the prescribed time limits, the complainants turned to the Ombudsman.

Based on an inspection of the documents, the Ombudsman was not convinced that the Commission had been justified in refusing access to the documents and urged it to reconsider its initial position and adopt explicit confirmatory decisions.

Regrettably, the Commission confirmed that no further access to the documents could be granted. As it was unlikely to change its position, the Ombudsman closed the case with a finding of maladministration. In doing so, she urged the Commission to give full effect to EU case law in the future, which requires the EU institutions to apply a particularly high standard of transparency to legislative documents.