The Ombudsman conducted an own-initiative inquiry into how the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the European Commission handle requests for public access to legislative documents, which are subject to greater transparency obligations. The inquiry aimed to make a systemic assessment but focused on public access requests related to three recently adopted legislative acts.

The Ombudsman found that the Parliament received too few public access requests within the scope of this inquiry for her to draw conclusions about its practice.

As regards the Council and the Commission, the inquiry showed that when requests are made, the two institutions disclosed a large amount of legislative documents. However, in many cases, they continued to apply the exceptions to access under the EU legislation on public access to documents too broadly. In particular, they fail to provide concrete evidence of actual risks that the disclosure of the requested legislative documents would entail.

The Ombudsman also found that there continue to be significant delays by the Commission in processing public access requests, including those concerning legislative documents. This was already the subject of a Special Report by the Ombudsman to the European Parliament, and reiterated the serious consequences of these delays when it comes to legislative documents.

The Ombudsman closed the inquiry setting out her findings and reiterating her position that the institutions must give full effect to the EU case-law on public access to legislative documents. To assist the institutions in improving their practices, the Ombudsman made a series of suggestions.