Relationship between Regulation No 1049/2001 and Regulation No 45/2001

T-903/16:
“32. At the outset, it should be recalled that Regulation No 1049/2001 and Regulation No 45/2001 have different objectives. The first is designed to ensure the greatest possible transparency in the decision-making process of the public authorities and the information on which they base their decisions. It is thus designed to facilitate as far as possible the exercise of the right of access to documents and to promote good administrative practices. The second is designed to ensure the protection of the freedoms and fundamental rights of individuals, particularly their private life, in the handling of personal data (judgment of 29 June 2010, Commission v Bavarian Lager, C 28/08 P, EU:C:2010:378, paragraph 49). It follows that, unlike Regulation No 1049/2001, Regulation No 45/2001 is not designed to facilitate the exercise of the right of access to documents (see, to that effect, the judgment of 17 July 2014, YS and Others, C 141/12 and C 372/12, EU:C:2014:2081, paragraph 47).
33. In that context, the rights of access laid down by those two regulations respectively have neither the same purpose nor the same beneficiaries. Article 2 of Regulation No 1049/2001 seeks to enable the public, namely any citizen and any natural or legal person, to access documents held by the institutions. Article 13 of Regulation 45/2001 seeks to enable access only by data subjects, to their personal data, namely information about them as an identified or identifiable person, without providing that those persons may, on that basis, also have access to documents containing those data. In that regard, it must be noted that Article 13(c) of Regulation No 45/2001 provides only that the data subject has the right to obtain ‘communication in an intelligible form of the data undergoing processing’