Commission Annual Report on Public Access to Documents

The Commission has published its annual report on the application of Regulation 1049/2001 on public access to its documents.

The report - COM(2007)548 final - that has just appeared covers the activities of the Commission in 2005. And it is the fourth such report. The last report, covering 2004, was published in 2005.

The report contains a useful summary of Ombudsman complaints, judgments of the Court of First Instance and cases pending before the Court of First Instance. There is also a statistical annex which shows that there were 3 173 initial requests for documents in 2005, up from 2 600 in 2004. Most requests are granted at the initial stage (68%), 23.5 % of initial refusals are partially revised and 8% revised in full at the confirmatory stage. The most popular area is that of antitrust (12.7 %) and only 1.24% of requests come from persons from non-European countries. Not a single request from the USA in 2005 !