51In that regard, it should be borne in mind that, according to settled case-law, if an EU institution hearing a request for access to a document decides to refuse to grant that request on the basis of one of the exceptions laid down in Article 4 of Regulation No 1049/2001, it must, in principle, explain how access to that document could specifically and actually undermine the interest protected by that exception. Moreover, the risk of the interest being so undermined must be reasonably foreseeable and must not be purely hypothetical (see, to that effect, judgment of 17 October 2013, Council v Access Info Europe, C‑280/11 P, EU:C:2013:671, paragraph 31 and the case-law cited). In certain cases, the Court acknowledged that it was however open to that institution to base its decisions in that regard on general presumptions which apply to certain categories of documents, as considerations of a generally similar kind are likely to apply to requests for disclosure relating to documents of the same nature (judgment of 16 July 2015, ClientEarth v Commission, C‑612/13 P, EU:C:2015:486, paragraph 69 and the case-law cited).
Source: EUR-Lex, © European Union, 1998-2026. Reuse authorised under Decision 2011/833/EU.