Transparency of Legislative Procedures and Access to Acts of Trilogues, Case T-540/15, De Capitani V. European Parliament

On 22 March 2018, for the first time the General Court ruled on access to documents of trilogues (case T-540/15, De Capitani v. European Parliament). These are informal meetings be-tween representatives of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, which nego-tiate to reach an agreement, which must subsequently be approved by those institutions in ac-cordance with their respective internal procedures. The judgment, delivered on the appeal made against a refusal by the European Parliament to grant access to the fourth column of the multicol-umn table used in an on-going trilogue, confirms that access to documents produced in the legisla-tive procedure can be denied only if the institution requested proves that it is reasonably foresee-able, and not purely hypothetical, that full access to the documents at issue is likely to undermine, specifically and actually, its decision-making process. The General Court considered that the prin-ciples of publicity and transparency are to be applied to trilogues, since they constitute a decisive stage in the legislative process, and that exceptions provided for in the regulation regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents shall be restrictively inter-preted. The judgment represents an important step towards reinforcing transparency of trilogues and democratic legislative process in the EU.