The complainant asked the European Commission to grant public access to correspondence exchanged between the European Commissioner for Agriculture and the Polish government. The Commission identified a large number of documents as falling under the complainant's request. It refused to disclose some of these. 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.

In the context of the Ombudsman's inquiry, the Commission identified additional documents as falling under the request. The Ombudsman sought to inspect the documents in question.