News & reporting
Transparency and access-to-documents cases across the EU and its member states.
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24 August 2026
Trade Secrecy on Trial: ACTA, TTIP and Public Scrutiny
Trade negotiations are the hardest test an access-to-documents regime faces. Negotiators argue, with some force, that a public negotiating position is a…
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17 August 2026
The European Ombudsman and Document Access Complaints
When an EU institution refuses access to a document, the requester faces a choice written directly into Regulation 1049/2001: challenge the refusal…
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10 August 2026
Sweden's Principle of Public Access to Documents
A principle with a 1766 pedigree Sweden's offentlighetsprincipen, the principle of public access to official documents, is the oldest legal regime of…
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3 August 2026
FOI Request Platforms in Europe: How Open Requests Work
For most of its history, freedom of information was exercised in private. A requester wrote to an authority, the authority answered that…
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27 July 2026
The Turco Judgment and Access to EU Legal Advice
Few judgments have shaped the practice of EU transparency law as durably as Sweden and Turco v Council, decided by the Grand…
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20 July 2026
Freedom of Information in Germany: The IFG Explained
A federal right of access since 2006 Germany's Informationsfreiheitsgesetz, usually shortened to IFG, gives everyone a legal claim to official information held…
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13 July 2026
Confirmatory Applications Under Regulation 1049/2001
A refusal is not the end of an EU access-to-documents request — by design, it is the halfway point. Regulation 1049/2001, the…
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3 December 2015Journalists Take the European Parliament to Court Over MEP Allowances
Journalists from across Europe asked the EU court to rule on the hidden records of parliamentarians' allowances. Twenty-nine journalists, representing all EU…
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10 March 2015
Semi-Transparency on TTIP: EU Cites US Limits on Disclosure
The European Commission opened up part of its negotiations with the United States on a transatlantic trade and investment agreement, but the…
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2 December 2014EU Data Supervisor Alarmed by Threats to Access Rights
Proposed new EU rules on data protection threatened public access to documents and freedom of expression. Data protection supervisor Peter Hustinx called…