By Toby McIntosh
The European Investment Bank failed to adequately justify its reasons for denying access to annual reports on whether is complying with best banking practices, according to the EIB’s internal watchdog, the Complaints Mechanism.
The Complaints Mechanism (EIB-CM) gave the EIB until March 26 to reconsider its answer to a journalist, Paola Tamma, EU correspondent at the Financial Times. Tamma asked for annual reports by the EIB’s Audit Committee about compliance with the EIB’s Best Banking Practices. Her May 3, 2024, request was denied on Jan. 27, 2025. She appealed the denial to the EIB-CM, which handle complaints about “maladministration.”
The 16-page “Conclusions Reports” issued Dec. 19 delves skeptically into the multiple reasons the EIB used to deny access to the reports based on exemptions in the EIB Transparency Policy (EIB-TP). The EIB-CM does not say the rationales used were improper, but finds that none of the justifications were adequately explained. The EIB-CM’s findings are advisory. Once the EIB responds, a further appeal may be filed with the EU Ombudsman.
“The breach of the EIB-TP results from the EIB not meeting the standards of statement of reasons identified by the case-law of the CJEU in matters of public right of access to documents,” concluded the EIB-CM, referring to opinions by the European Court of Justice (CJEU).
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Use of Blanket Exemption for Audits Challenged
The EIB-CM questioned the EIB’s use of a sweeping exemption to prevent disclosure of audits.
The EIB cited an exemption in the Transparency Policy (5.6) which states, “Disclosure of information/documents related to inspections, investigations and audits shall be presumed to undermine the protection of the purpose of the inspections, investigations and audits.”
Tamma argued in her appeal the requested reports do not qualify as inspections, investigations or audits as those terms are normally defined. And having asked for the reports issued since 2019, she also said the EIB failed to meet a requirement that requests related to finalized investigations should be assessed in light of all the relevant circumstances of each case.
The EIB-CM said that under the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union “general presumptions of confidentiality allow an institution or body to refuse access to documents pertaining to certain procedures, without being obliged to carry out a specific and individual examination of every document for which there is a request for disclosure.”
However, the EIB-CM said, “… the case-law has specified that, where an institution considers that a general presumption of confidentiality is applicable, it has the obligation to identify or to draw up a list of the documents covered by such presumption.”
Also, the application of a general presumption of confidentiality and non-disclosure “does not rule out the possibility for the requester of a specific document to rebut the presumption, by demonstrating that such document is not covered by the presumption, or that disclosure of that document does not jeopardise the objectives of the procedure it relates to, or that there is an overriding public interest in disclosure of the document concerned,” the EIB-CM said.
The EIB-CM concluded that “… the EIB should have explained why the REP reports qualify as documents related to inspections, and it should have identified in its reply the list of REP reports that it considered covered by the presumption of non-disclosure.”
“By not providing those explanations, the EIB has undermined the possibility for the complainant to exercise the right to rebut the presumption of confidentiality for the REP reports,” according to the EIB-CM.
In similar fashion, the Conclusions Report said the EIB had failed to justify its use of other exemptions, such as the ones protecting the EIB’s commercial interests and its decision-making process.”
Nor did the EIB show whether it “has assessed the possibility to give to the complainant partial access to the REP reports,” the EIB-CM said.
Overall, the last paragraph of the Conclusions Report stated, “For the EIB to deny access to the REP reports under the EIB-TP, the reply to the complainant should be supported by a proper statement of grounds.”
See text: 2025-12-19 Complaint SG-A-2025-01_REP Reports – Conclusions Report (1)
Editorial Note: EYE editor Toby McIntosh consulting with Tamma on her appeal. EYE has a separate matter pending before the EU Ombudsman, challenging both delay by the EIB and its justifications for denying a request. (See most recent EYE article.) Also, EYE recently appealed to the EIB-CM after the EIB did not acknowledge a request for information and exceeded the deadline for responding to requests.
