Court of Justice 14 April 2015, C-612/13 P (ClientEarth v European Commission.)

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In this Opinion, Advocate General Cruz Villalón proposes that the Court of Justice allow ClientEarth's appeal against the General Court's judgment upholding the Commission's refusal of access to studies on Member States' transposition of environmental directives, on the ground that the General Court erred in extending the concept of 'investigations' under the third indent of Article 4(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 to encompass all pre-infringement information-gathering activities, rather than limiting it to studies connected to infringement proceedings already initiated or whose initiation was imminent. The Advocate General further opines that no general presumption of confidentiality can be applied indiscriminately to studies produced by an external consulting firm, since such documents are attributable to their authors rather than to the Commission and do not inherently compromise the Commission's investigative purpose. On the second and third grounds of appeal, the Advocate General concludes that Article 4(4)(c) of the Aarhus Convention lacks the unconditional and sufficiently precise character required for it to serve as a direct criterion of validity review, and that mere invocation of the principle of transparency does not, without more, establish an overriding public interest justifying disclosure.AI