The complainant asked the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) to give public access to emails it exchanged with an organisation that works on fighting online child sexual abuse (CSAM).

Europol identified a number of documents as falling within the scope of the request and granted partial access to some of them. In withholding access to the rest of the documents and parts of documents, it invoked exceptions under the EU legislation on public access to documents, arguing that disclosure could undermine the protection of public security and its decision-making process.

The Ombudsman inspected the documents in question and took the view that there was scope for further disclosure. She asked Europol to reconsider its position and grant the widest possible access to the documents.

In response, Europol granted wider public access to some of the emails it exchanged with the organisation. The Ombudsman welcomed this but regretted that Europol did not use the opportunity to better explain why full access could not be granted. She closed the inquiry concluding that Europol had partially accepted her solution proposal.