Judgment_paragraph 6 · Olli Mattila v Council of the European Union and Commission of the European Communities (C-353/01 P)

6In answer to the second plea, the Court of First Instance held inter alia:68 It is clear from the judgment in Hautala v Council that the principle of proportionality permits the Council and the Commission, in particular cases where the volume of the document or the passages to be removed would give rise to an unreasonable amount of administrative work, to balance the public's interest in gaining access to those fragmentary parts against the burden of work so caused (paragraph 86 of the judgment). The Council and the Commission could thus, in those particular cases, safeguard the interests of good administration.69 Similarly, whilst, in accordance with Hautala v Council, the Council and the Commission are required to consider whether access ought to be granted to information not covered by the exceptions, the principle of sound administration requires that the duty to grant partial access should not result in an administrative burden which is disproportionate to the applicant's interest in obtaining that information. In light of this, it is clear that the Council and the Commission are in any event entitled to refuse partial access in cases where examination of the documents in question shows that partial access would be meaningless because the parts of the documents that could be disclosed would be of no use to the applicant.70 During the course of these proceedings, the Council and the Commission have asserted that partial access was not possible in this case, because the parts of the documents to which access could have been granted contained so little information as to be of no use to the applicant. At the hearing, the Council submitted that the documents in question cannot generally be taken individually, and that their component parts are not easily removable.71 The defendant institutions do not therefore dispute that they failed to consider the possibility of granting partial access to the documents in question. Nevertheless, having taken account of the explanations they have proffered and in view of the nature of the documents in question, it seems that, had they done so, they would not in any event have agreed to partial access. Given the particular circumstances of the present case, the fact that the defendant institutions failed to consider the question of granting partial access had no effect on the outcome of their examination (see, to that effect, Case T-75/95 Giinzler Aluminium v Commission [1996] ECR II-497, paragraph 55, and Case T-106/95 FFSA and Others v Commission [1997] ECR II-229, paragraph 199).72 In this connection, it is appropriate to stress the fact already mentioned that the documents at issue were prepared in the context of negotiations and contain information on the European Union's position as regards its relations with Russia and Ukraine and on negotiations to be held with the United States on the subject of Ukraine. The fact that the documents are sensitive is corroborated by the applicant's statement at the hearing to the effect that the Supreme Court of Finland condemned him for having communicated to Russia certain other documents whose content was almost identical to that of the documents to which access was denied him by the defendant institutions.73 Secondly, the Council's assertion that the documents in question cannot easily be taken separately and that their component parts are not easily removable is uncontested. It must be observed in this connection that the applicant has no basis for alleging that document COREU CFSP/PRES/1239/98 contains, inter alia, a draft of an EU/United States statement which, precisely because of its public nature, ought to have been divulged. The fact that that document contains information which was the subject of a public statement does not mean that the Council was under an obligation to divulge the draft of that statement which, by definition, was purely a preparatory document intended for internal use only. As the Council emphasised during the hearing, there are, generally speaking, differences between the draft of a statement and the final text that may point up differences of opinion which must remain confidential. Furthermore, the public's right to be informed is adequately protected by its right of access to the final version of the statement.74 It follows that the defendant institutions did not infringe the principle of proportionality by failing to grant partial access to the documents at issue.’