Public Access to Documents in the EU, by Leonor Rossi and Patricia Vinagre e Silva, (Oxford/Portland, Hart Publishing, 2017, ISBN 9781509905331); xxxviii + 340pp.; £49.00 hb.
Access to EU Documents: A Policy in Three Acts
On 7 February, the EU celebrated a remarkable anniversary. Exactly twenty-five years ago on that day, the Heads of State and Government (HSG) of the European Community’s then twelve Member States took the bold leap forward by signing the Maastricht Treaty. Another leap forward lay tucked away in one of the Treaty’s accompanying texts, even when the Member States’ representatives did not realise it at the time of signing. Declaration 17, attached to the Maastricht Treaty, recognised the positive relation between transparency and democracy, and professed an intention to take steps to advance such transparency. Thus began the First Act of a transformative development called Access to Documents.
On 27 February, the General Court of the EU delivered another ruling on the EU right of public access to documents. In case T-118/12 (Breyer v Commission), German Pirate Party member Patrick Breyer (pictured) took action against the Commission’s decision not to grant it access to documents, saying that these documents, being held by the Court, fell outside of the scope of the access law. While the Court ended up ruling otherwise, ACELG PhD Eljalill Tauschinsky points at an element of the case that is problematic nonetheless: the Court’s decision to make Breyer bear half of his own costs, to punish him for publishing documents pertaining to the court case on his website, thereby allegedly inviting readers to comment negatively and exert pressure on the Commission in an ongoing case. While a comparable situation occurred over 15 years ago in the Swedish Journalist Association case, Tauschinsky argues that Breyer was punished worse for a comparable breach.