The ruling could have broader implications for scrutiny of EU decision-making, pointing to limits on the Commission’s ability to keep countries’ positions confidential. It also adds to a growing line of cases testing how far transparency rules stretch when institutions argue disclosure could disrupt internal deliberations.
At EU level, country representatives and the Commission regularly authorize chemicals in private committee meetings through a procedure known as comitology — a system now likely to face fresh pressure in Brussels to open up, given its powerful yet often opaque role in shaping health and environmental rules.
“Disclosure would unsettle the functioning of the […] Committee and expose a difficult and lengthy decision-making process to further external pressure,” the Commission argued.
But the court said Wednesday that any risk of seriously undermining the decision-making process must be “reasonably foreseeable and not purely hypothetical.” In other words, the court found that it is the Commission’s responsibility to explain how handing over the documents might jeopardize that process.
The ruling stopped short of a full victory for the green NGO, allowing the Commission to keep some litigation-related files secret in parallel EU court cases brought by industry against a ban on the fungicide mancozeb.
Nevertheless, ClientEarth called the ruling a “landmark win for transparency and nature.”