Right of access to documents: transparency with exceptions

Purpose of the present work is to examine the right of access to documents in the European Union with particular focus on the principle of transparency. The analysis features, first of all, the evolution and legal framework of the right, moving from its very origins in the Nordic countries, to Regulation No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and Council and the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents, through the founding treaties of the Union. Moreover, this work focuses on how the right of access and the exceptions provisioned by the EU law affect the transparency and accountability of the European Union’s administration. In the second part of the work are presented and examined six cases concerning the right of access to documents brought before the European Court of Justice. The extensive legal background presented in the first part of the thesis enables to fully understand the analysis of the six cases, which completes the work providing evidence of how the right of access to documents has been applied in practicality. The analysis provided in this work, in its entirety, shows that the right of access to documents is central when it comes to guaranteeing the most democratic structure and functioning of the public administration, and that the effort made by the institutions and the interest shown by the European citizens prove the importance of this right in their every-day dynamics