Official Journal of the European Union

C 245/7

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(Case C-213/15 P)

(2015/C 245/10)

Language of the case: German

Parties

Appellant: European Commission (represented by: P. Van Nuffel and H. Krämer, acting as Agents)

Other parties to the proceedings: Patrick Breyer, Republic of Finland, Kingdom of Sweden

Form of order sought

The appellant claims that the Court should:

—set aside the judgment under appeal;

—give final judgment in the matter and dismiss the action;

—order the applicant to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

By its appeal, the European Commission claims that the Court should set aside the judgment of the General Court of 27 February 2015 in Breyer v Commission, Case T-188/12, in so far as the General Court annulled the Commission’s decision of 3 April 2012, by which the Commission had refused to grant the applicant full access to documents concerning the Republic of Austria’s transposition of Directive 2006/24 (1) and to documents concerning the case which had given rise to the judgment of 29 July 2010 in Commission v Austria (2) in so far as the decision had refused access to the written submissions lodged by the Republic of Austria in the course of that case.

The applicant had founded his action for annulment inter alia of the contested decision on a single ground by which, in substance, he had complained of an infringement of Article 2(3) of Regulation No 1049/2001 (3). The General Court annulled the contested decision in so far as by that decision access was refused to the written submissions lodged by the Republic of Austria in the course of that case. With regard to the ground on which the action had been founded, the General Court stated, in essence, that the written submissions at issue were documents within the meaning of Article 2(3) read in conjunction with Article 3(a) of Regulation No 1049/2001, and consequently fell within the scope of application of that regulation, and that subparagraph 4 of Article 15 (3) TFEU does not preclude the application of Regulation No 1049/2001 to the written submissions at issue on the basis of their special nature.

The Commission founds its appeal on a single point of law by which it complains of the interpretation of Article 15(3) TFEU on which the General Court based its conclusion that that provision did not preclude the application of Regulation No 1049/2001 to the written submissions at issue on the basis of their special nature.

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(1) Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC (OJ 2006 L 105, p. 54).

(2) C-189/09, EU:C:2010:455.

(3) Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (OJ 2001 L 145, p. 43).

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