Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Environment – Freedom of access to information – Directive 2003/4 – Environmental information – Definition

(European Parliament and Council Directive 2003/4, Art. 2)

2. Agriculture – Approximation of laws – Placing of plant protection products on the market – Directive 91/414 – Principle of confidentiality of information involving industrial or commercial secrets

(European Parliament and Council Directive 2003/4, Art. 4(2); Council Directive 91/414, Art. 14, first and second para.)

3. Environment – Freedom of access to information – Directive 2003/4 – Obligation to balance the public interest served by disclosure of environmental information against the specific interest served by a refusal to disclose

(European Parliament and Council Directive 2003/4, Art. 4; Council Directive 91/414, Art. 14)

Summary

1. The term ‘environmental information’ in Article 2 of Directive 2003/4 on public access to environmental information and repealing Directive 90/313 must be interpreted as including information submitted within the framework of a national procedure for the authorisation or the extension of the authorisation of a plant protection product with a view to setting the maximum quantity of a pesticide, a component thereof or reaction products which may be present in food or beverages.

Since it aims to limit the risk that a component of biological diversity will be affected and the risk that residues of plant protection products will be dispersed in particular in soil or groundwater, the provision of information on the presence of such residues in or on a product, even though such information does not directly involve an assessment of the consequences of those residues for human health, concerns elements of the environment which may affect human health if excess levels of those residues are present, which is precisely what that information is intended to ascertain.

(see paras 42-43, operative part 1)

2. The first paragraph of Article 14 of Directive 91/414 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market must, subject to the possible applicability of the second paragraph of that article to cases in which a situation is one of those listed in that second paragraph, be interpreted as being capable of application only in so far as the obligations under Article 4(2) of Directive 2003/4 on public access to environmental information and repealing Directive 90/313 are not affected.

Article 14 must be read as meaning that it is without prejudice to the provisions of Directive 2003/4 that the Member States and the Commission must ensure that information supplied by applicants for authorisations to place plant protection products on the market which involves industrial or commercial secrets is treated confidentially if the applicants so request and the Member State or the Commission accepts that their request is warranted. While those provisions allow the Member States to provide that a request for environmental information may, except where the information relates to emissions into the environment, be refused if disclosure of the information would adversely affect the confidentiality of commercial or industrial information where such confidentiality is provided for by national or European Union law, they also require that such a ground for refusal must be interpreted in a restrictive way, taking into account the public interest served by disclosure, and that in every particular case the public interest served by disclosure must be weighed against the interest served by the refusal.

In those circumstances, where a request is made to the competent authorities of a Member State for access to environmental information that has been supplied by an applicant for an authorisation to place plant protection products on the market, and the request for protection of that information as industrial or commercial secrets within the meaning of Article 14 of Directive 91/414 appears to them to be justified, those authorities are nevertheless obliged to allow the request for access to that information if it relates to emissions into the environment or if, in other cases, the public interest served by disclosure appears to outweigh the interest served by the refusal to disclose.

(see paras 50, 52-54, operative part 2)

3. Article 4 of Directive 2003/4 on public access to environmental information and repealing Directive 90/313 must be interpreted as meaning that the balancing exercise it prescribes between the public interest served by the disclosure of environmental information and the specific interest served by a refusal to disclose must be carried out in each individual case submitted to the competent authorities, even if the national legislature were by a general provision to determine criteria to facilitate that comparative assessment of the interests involved.

Neither Article 14 of Directive 91/414 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market nor any other provision of Directive 2003/4 suggests that the balancing of the interests involved, as prescribed in Article 4 of Directive 2003/4, could be substituted by a measure other than an examination of those interests in each individual case. Consequently, that does not prevent the national legislature from determining, by a general provision, criteria to facilitate that comparative assessment of the interests involved, provided only that that provision does not dispense the competent authorities from actually carrying out a specific examination of each situation submitted to them in connection with a request for access to environmental information made on the basis of Directive 2003/4.

(see paras 57-59, operative part 3)