Public access to documents plays a pivotal role in the transparency of EU decision-making and is a cornerstone of good administration. Despite its importance as a fundamental right, there have been many occasions when the refusal, delay or restriction of access to documents was questionable from a transparency standpoint. On 10 March 2026, the European Parliament adopted a report on public access to documents, assessing shortcomings in European transparency regulation.

Public access to documents is a fundamental right, yet, practice seems to show that the EU institutions treat it more as an administrative burden and a form of ’Yelp-style’ reviewing of their own work by the citizens than a pillar of a thriving European democracy. 

There is much to be done in the field of transparency within the national and European democratic sphere. Public access to documents plays an important role when it comes to transparency and democratic accountability. As Ombudswoman Anjinho recently stated, „public administration must be open, transparent, and accountable” and she also remarked that trying to access documents from EU institutions sometimes feels like „a game of hide and seek”.

European Parliament resolution of 10 March 2026 on public access to documents – report covering the years 2022 – 2024 (2025/2137(INI)) strives to fulfill the parliamentary oversight function of the EP within this field. The goal of this post is to give a short analysis of the findings of the European Parliament regarding this issue.

The report first emphasizes that access to documents constitutes a fundamental right and should be dealt with accordingly. It acknowledges that the European Commission revised its Rules of Procedure in 2024, attempting to clarify rules on public access to documents under Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. Some stakeholders argued that the revised definition of a document, further exceptions to registering documents and presumptions of non-disclosure could represent a step back and could harm the uniform application of the public access to documents regulation. Regarding the practice of the European Commission, the report emphasizes that there are clear positive trends, however, in 85% of the reviewed cases, the Commission failed to meet the deadline to respond, in 60% of cases by more than 2 months.

The report calls on the Commission to consider partial disclosure in cases where access is refused on the basis of justified reasons. It calls on the Commission to apply a proactive approach, with a faster, less cumbersome, more accessible procedure handling complaints. It states that EU institutions, offices, and agencies tend to over-classify documents, which breaches the principle of transparency. There is an inconsistency in handling similar public access to documents cases and an overly frequent use of exceptions to refuse to provide full access to documents, in spite of the obligation of such refusals to be the exception.

The report also states (as the EP is a legislative body) that during legislative procedures, in many cases, EU institutions do not proactively publish documents and thus citizens have no possibility of knowing which documents actually exist to be able to request access. In many cases, the European Commission does not justify why it has refused access to a specific document.

Problems are not only persistent within the Commission, but within the Council as well. The report emphasizes a deep lack of transparency within the Council in the field of public access to documents; there is a lack of proactive publication and registration, most documents are designated LIMITE and it calls on the Council to uphold higher legislative standards.

The report does state that „the European Parliament should set a good example by proactively disclosing documents”, however, it does not go into the practise of the European Parliament regarding public access to documents and mostly focuses on the European Commission, the Council, agencies and other bodies of the EU. The European Parliament should not shift the blame simply onto other institutions, but should look more into its own practise as well. There is a dependence of the European ombudsman on the European Parliament, as the European Parliament elects the European Ombudsman (Art 228 TFEU). Even though paragraph (3) of Art 228 TFEU states that „the Ombudsman shall be completely independent in the performance of his duties”, the selection procedure does not make this fully possible. A modification of the election procedure and including other EU institutions or the Member States could help to resolve this issue.

Considering the findings of the European Parliament, there is much to be done in the field of transparency within EU institutions. Refusal seems to be the rule and not the exception, EU institutions try to classify documents so they are not easily accessible and the practise seems to be more restricting, time-consuming than open towards the European public.

The underlying problem seems to be the fact that European officials treat public access to documents as something inconvenient, as a review of their own work and with a great anxiety regarding how the information given out could be used against the EU institutions themselves within the European public. There is a need for a paradigm shift to trust European citizens and the European public more.

The problem, therefore, is not legal; it is more cultural. Public access to documents is perceived as a threat by EU institutions instead of a democratic exercise. A fundamental shift in institutional mindset is required — otherwise this fundamental right will become purely symbolic.

Árpád Lapu is an assistant research fellow at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. He was a policy adviser on constitutional issues at the European Parliament between 2019-2024. He worked as an adviser at the Ministry of Justice of Hungary (2017-2019) and the Ministry of European Union Affairs (2024-2026), conducting EU law, international law and comparative constitutional analyses. He has earned his JD at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Hungary, has a BA in international relations from the University of Szeged, and an MA in European and international administration from Andrássy Gyula German Speaking University in Budapest. He has completed an LLM in international law at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain).