Polak Room, Résidence Palace, Rue de la Loi 155, Brussels

The EU institutions are obliged to keep records of documents relevant to their work and any EU citizen can request to view them. This right is enshrined in EU law but Regulation 1049/2001 is now 20 years old. New technologies, as well as changing expectations about the transparency of public administrations, mean it is time to discuss the future of the EU’s access to documents rules.

Transparency and access to documents inquiries account for around one quarter of the Ombudsman’s inquiries each year. There is a fixed timetable in the procedure for requesting documents, but are there too many delays in the system? While institutions have the right to refuse access to documents for certain specific reasons, are these exemptions applied too readily?

The conference was divided into two parts: an expert panel looking into the experiences people have when they request documents and a high-level panel considering the future of access to document rules.

 See the report, summarising the debate.

In order to prepare the conference, the Ombudsman carried out an ad hoc survey of some stakeholders on their experience requesting access to EU documents (see report on results).