Judgment_paragraph 43 · Patrick Breyer v European Commission (T-188/12)

43Lastly, it has already been ruled that it follows from the broad definition of the notion of document, as set out in Article 3(a) of Regulation No 1049/2001, and from the wording and the very existence of the exception relating to the protection of court proceedings in the second indent of Article 4(2) of that regulation that the Union legislature did not intend to exclude the institutions’ litigious activities from the public’s rights of access, but that it provided, in that regard, that the institutions are to refuse to disclose documents relating to court proceedings where such disclosure would undermine the proceedings to which those documents relate (API v Commission, paragraph 41 above, EU:T:2007:258, paragraph 59).