8In rejecting the plea alleging infringement of the Code of Conduct adopted by Decision 94/90, the Court of First Instance held:66 ... it must be held that, so long as there is no rule of law of a higher order according to which the Commission was not empowered, in Decision 94/90, to exclude from the scope of the Code of Conduct documents of which it was not the author, the authorship rule can be applied...69 It must be held, [as regards the interpretation of that rule] that the authorship rule, however it may be characterised, lays down an exception to the general principle of transparency in Decision 94/90. It follows that this rule must be construed and applied strictly, so as not to frustrate the application of the general principle of transparency (Case T-188/97 Rothmans International v Commission [1999] ECR II-2463, paragraphs 53 to 55)....73 It is clear, on examination of the five types of documents [referred to in the contested decision], that their authors are either the Member States or the Argentine authorities.74 It follows that the Commission has applied the authorship rule correctly in taking the view that it was not required to grant access to those documents. It cannot, therefore, have committed an abuse of rights’
Source: EUR-Lex, © European Union, 1998-2026. Reuse authorised under Decision 2011/833/EU.