Notice for the OJ

 

    Action brought on 27 November 2003 by Yves Franchet and Daniel Byk against the Commission of the European Communities

    (Case T-391/03)

    Language of the case: French

An action against the Commission of the European Communities was brought before the Court of First Instance of the European Communities on 27 November 2003 by Yves Franchet and Daniel Byk, both residing in Luxembourg, represented by Georges Vandersanden and Laure Levi, lawyers.

The applicants claim that the Court should:

─    annul the European Commission's decision of 18 August 2003, notified on 21 August 2003, refusing the applicants' request for access to certain documents held by that institution, and the Commission's decision of 1 October 2003, refusing the confirmatory application lodged by the applicants on 8 September 2003;

─    order the defendant to pay all of the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments:

The applicants in this case had submitted a request to the appointing authority for access to various documents held by the Commission regarding investigations carried out as a consequence of certain irregularities which had been found to exist in relation to Eurostat. The rejection of this application forms the basis of this case.

The defendant relies on two exceptions in Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, and on the protection of court proceedings and of the purpose of inspections, investigations and audits.

In support of their position, the applicants claim that there has been a breach of Regulation No 1049/2001, in particular of Articles 2 and 4, a breach of the fundamental right of access to documents, a manifest error of assessment, erroneous and contradictory reasoning, and a breach of the principle of proportionality.

They consider in that regard that the defendant has wrongly given a wide scope to the exceptions it relies on, which is contrary to case-law. The case in fact involves no current court proceedings within the meaning of that case-law and, moreover, the European Anti-Fraud Office is an administrative service, which compiles administrative files and reports.

Lastly, they claim that the Commission failed to determine the requests for access in the light of the specific facts and circumstances of the case by failing to consider the impact that the contents of the documents might have on the exceptions relied on, and failed to give proper weight to the interests in question.

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