Official Journal of the European Union

C series

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C/2025/272

(Case T-594/24)

(C/2025/272)

Language of the case: German

Parties

Applicant: Compass-Datenbank GmbH (Vienna, Austria) (represented by: F. Galla, lawyer)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

—annul Decision C(2024) 6786 of the Commission, as the defendant, of 24 September 2024, by which the Commission rejected the applicant’s confirmatory application for access to documents – EASE 2023/3877;

—declare that the Commission, as the defendant, must pay the applicant, Compass-Datenbank GmbH, its procedural costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicant alleges infringement by the defendant of Article 2(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. (1)

The defendant incorrectly assumes that the documents to which the applicant requests access are not in its possession. This is directly contradicted by the technical description of the e-Justice Portal.

There is no such thing as data ownership in European civil law. In practice, the EU legislature has often adopted a different approach in recent years, focusing on the right of access to certain data and their use for certain legally defined purposes, without granting or defining ownership rights as such.

Industrial property rights over the data requested can hardly exist in law and, in any case, are not known; such rights cannot therefore justify any restriction on use. Even if, for that reason, the data were in the possession of the Member States and stored only temporarily by the defendant, there is no legal basis for refusing to transmit those data to a re-user such as the applicant.

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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).

ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/272/oj

ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)

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