The complainant sought public access to final decisions by the European Commission on a series of access to document requests. The Commission refused access to these so-called 'confirmatory decisions', which it adopts following requests for review of its initial decisions on public access. It argued that the request covered too many documents, which would be not be possible to assess in the applicable time limit and would involve a disproportionate use of resources.

The Ombudsman opened an inquiry and, as an initial step, asked the Commission to reply to some of the issues raised by the complainant.