The complainant asked the European Commission to grant public access to documents concerning its proposal for a regulation to prevent and combat online child sexual abuse. The Commission identified 121 documents as falling within the scope of the request and granted wide public access to 88 of them. For the remaining 33 documents, the Commission only gave access to parts of five. In refusing access, it invoked several exceptions under the EU legislation on public access to documents, including the need to protect ongoing decision-making. Dissatisfied with the limited access granted to these 33 documents, the complainant turned to the Ombudsman.

Following an inspection of the documents at issue, the Ombudsman was not convinced by the Commission’s arguments and took the view that refusal to grant wide public access constituted maladministration. She recommended the Commission re-consider its position.

In reply, the Commission granted the complainant significantly increased access to certain categories of documents, but maintained that it could not disclose large parts of documents concerning its internal deliberations and exchanges of views on the draft legislative proposal.

The Ombudsman considered that the Commission had not provided reasonable explanations as to why no further access could be given. She concluded that the Commission had failed to give the widest access possible to the documents at issue and had therefore not given effect to the clear case law that requires EU institutions to apply a particularly high standard of transparency to legislative documents. She closed the inquiry confirming her finding of maladministration.