CJEU endorses that the European Parliament denied access to two documents of the investigation against a former Czech Prime Minister

BRUSSELS, 28 Sep. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The General Court of the European Union has endorsed this Wednesday the decision of the European Parliament to deny access to two documents of the investigation into a possible misuse of Union funds and possible conflicts of interest of the former Czech Prime Minister, Andrej Babis, understanding that interest has disappeared since the document has been made public.

The case dates back to 2020 when the European Parliament studied a possible conflict of interest of the Czech leader in the negotiations of the European budget due to his influence in Agrofert, the conglomerate of 250 agricultural and food companies that the prime minister founded and transferred to a trust fund in 2017 when he came to power.

Then Babis’s own company submitted a request for access to different documents, of which the European Parliament denied two: a letter from the European Commission addressed to the Czech Prime Minister and a final audit report by Brussels.

This decision was appealed by Agrofert before the General Court, which in its ruling this Wednesday has validated the European Parliament’s action by dismissing the appeal on access to Babis’s brief and considering that, in the case of the Commission’s audit report Union, the interest in taking action against this blockade has disappeared as it was published by the Community Executive itself.

In the case of the report, as a result of its publication, the refusal by the European Parliament “becomes ineffective because the author of the document, the Commission, decided to allow it to be accessible to the public.” And the court points out that “the annulment of the contested decision as a denial of access to the aforementioned report would not entail any additional consequences”, understanding that at that time, the refusal to have this document ceased to generate a benefit for the plaintiff.

With regard to the communication between Brussels and the former Czech Prime Minister, the ruling indicates that the existence of a higher public interest that would justify the disclosure of the document was not taken into account.

According to the court, the interest invoked by the plaintiff company is not a general interest “but a private interest”, “in such a way that it has not shown that there was a higher public interest that would justify the disclosure of the Commission’s letter”.