Public access to Council documents: 2024 report

The Council today approved its 2024 report on public access to documents. The report describes trends in the implementation of Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to Council documents last year and reviews other related aspects.

Legislative activities and transparency

The report notes a much lower level of legislative activity in 2024 in relation to previous years, which is typical for the end of the legislative cycle. In total, 57 Council negotiating mandates were agreed.

According to the agreed approach on strengthening legislative transparency, all mandates, the outcome of negotiations with the Parliament and other main documents related to the legislative procedure were made public.

Council’s public register

The report also highlights that the Council’s public register included over 527 000 original-language documents on 31 December 2024. Of these documents, more than 72% are public and available for download.

Throughout 2024, almost 24 000 original language documents were added to the register, of which around 70% are public and available to download. This includes over 4 400 legislative documents, of which almost 84% have been made fully available to the public, either directly upon circulation or upon request.

The Council's public register was consulted nearly 522 000 times.

Access to documents requests

Anyone can request access to documents listed in the public register and which are not yet public. Access can only be refused based on one of the exceptions provided for in Regulation 1049/2001. These include, among others, the need to protect the institution's decision-making process and the public interest as regards defence and military matters and international relations. If access is refused at the initial stage, a confirmatory application may be submitted.

In 2024, the Council received over 2 800 initial requests for access to documents and 30 confirmatory applications, which required the analysis of more than 10 000 documents.

At the initial stage, full access was granted to 72.5 % of the documents and partial access to 11.7 %. Regarding confirmatory applications, full access was granted to 28.6 % of the documents and partial access to 35.7 %.

Types of requests

As in previous years, more than half of the requests for access to documents were made by the representatives of various civil society and private sector organisations (29%) and the academic world (24%).

The requested documents were related to several policy areas, most notably justice and home affairs (21.3%), foreign affairs (11.5 %), competitiveness (10.8 %) and Environment (9.7 %).

• Annual report on access to documents for 2024
• Search in the public register
• Request a document (online form)
• Strengthening legislative transparency (July 2020)