In its most recent newsletter, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Expertise Centre for European Law (ECER) dedicates an entry to the recent Leino-Sandberg v Parliament judgment.
In its brief review (in Dutch), ECER summarises the ruling of the Court of Justice as finding that “the placement of European Parliament documents on a [third party’s] blog does not constitute disclosure in the sense of the Eurowob [Dutch administrative slang for European FOI law]”.
Since ECER was founded in 2003 by the recently retired senior legal advisor Ivo van der Steen as an in-house ministerial expertise repository and exchange forum, it has taken a keen interest in the question of transparency in the EU and particular the public’s right of access to EU documents, even opening a special online dossier on the matter in which case law and other doctrinal developments are regularly reviewed.
In the Leino-Sandberg v Parliament case, law professor and principal investigator of the TrUE project which funds this website brought a case against the European Parliament when the latter refused to grant her access to documents related to its refusal to grant access to trilogue-related documents to former Parliamentary staff member Emilio de Capitani. The General Court ruled that Leino-Sandberg no longer had a valid interest in the proceedings after the Parliament pointed her towards a blog on which De Capitani had disclosed the documents requested by her. In the latest ruling, the Court of Justice quashes that ruling a refers the case back to the General Court.
This blog has recently posted a legal analysis on the case, while the TrUE project is due to hold a webinar on the matter on 18 February 2021.