Public access to Council documents: 2015 report

On 24 June 2016, the Council approved its report on last year's implementation of regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to documents.  

In 2015, the Council received 2784 initial requests for access to documents and 24 confirmatory applications, requiring the analysis of 12102 documents. At the initial stage, full access was granted to 9277 documents and partial access to 1094 documents.  Access was refused to 1731 documents.

During the period covered by this report, the Council issued 8670 legislative documents of which
3115 were issued as public upon circulation. Of the remaining 5555 legislative documents issued as "LIMITE" (not directly accessible), 4683 were made public upon request, a release rate of 84%.

At the initial stage, documents were refused mainly in order to protect the Council's decision-making process (587 times, 45%), to protect the public interest as regards international relations (244 times, 19%) and as regards public security (47 times, 4%). In 28% of cases (362 times), documents were refused by combining several exceptions. The protection of personal data was the exception used most often to justify partial access (317 times, 29%).

At the confirmatory stage, documents were refused mainly in order to protect the public interest as regards international relations (23 times, 35%) and to protect the Council's decision-making process together with another exception (41 times, 62%). The protection of the decision-making process in combination with another reason was also the exception most often used to justify partial access (24 times, 63%). 

The Council's General Secretariat spent an average of 16 working days to process initial requests and 29 working days to process confirmatory applications. The deadline of 15 working days to process initial requests was extended for 671 requests, that is, in 24% of cases.

• Čtrnáctá výroční zpráva Rady o provádění nařízení Evropského parlamentu a Rady (ES) č. 1049/2001 ze dne 30. května 2001 o přístupu veřejnosti k dokumentům Evropského parlamentu, Rady a Komise