Access Info's Litigation at the European Union Access Info Europe v. Council of the European Union, Hellenic Republic and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – T-233/2009 The EU is reforming its rules on access to documents and Access Info wanted to know what position each government was taking on the reform. We asked the Council of the EU on 3 December 2008, and it responded on 17 December. The Council granted Access Info partial access to the documents requested: we were provided with the summary of the discussions but without the names of the countries which had

Access Info has identified some key problems with EU transparency: People are having problems getting access to information: the European Ombudsman’s report for 2008 says that 36% of citizens’ complaints relate to transparency and access to documents. But at the same time, most users of the EU’s access rules are businesses rather than journalists, civil society organisations or members of the public. And even when these stakeholders might think about making requests the explanations given on the EU’s websites makes it seem quite daunting (despite the fact that making requests is really quite straightforward!).