Judgment_paragraph 52 · Darius Nicolai Spirlea and Mihaela Spirlea v European Commission (T-669/11)

52The institution to which a request for access has been made, as the maker of a decision to refuse access to documents, is therefore responsible for the lawfulness of that decision. The Court has therefore held that the institution cannot accept a Member State’s objection to disclosure of a document originating from that State if no reasons at all are given for the objection or if the reasons relied on by that State for refusing access to the document in question do not refer to the exceptions listed in Article 4(1) to (3) of Regulation No 1049/2001 (Sweden v Commission, paragraph 88, and IFAW Internationaler Tierschutz-Fonds v Commission, paragraph 61).