EU Court of Justice to rule on anonymous and pseudonymous applications for environmental information

Request for a preliminary ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union - interpretation of Articles 2(5), 3(1) and (5)(c), 4(1)(b) and 6(1) of Directive 2003/4 - request is made in proceedings regarding an appeal to the High Court by Coillte against a decision of the Commissioner for Environmental Information which held that anonymous or pseudonymous requests for information under Directive 2003/4 were valid - Article 6(1)(c) of the 2007 regulations requires a “name” and “address” - referring court is determining that as a matter of domestic law “name” means actual name and not a pseudonym, and “address” means a current physical address – background - A requester (possibly plural) organised a ’campaign’ of writing to Coillte using different anonymised requests – each of a similar format - seeking access to information on the environment - no physical addresses were provided - names are generally inspired by film characters - within 3 months the Appellant received 130 verified and anonymised requests – serious impact on Appellant’s operation - increased its team from 0.5 staff to 3.5 staff - Appellant says that requests are not designed to elicit environmental information - wider campaign for questionable motives – request received from a requester calling themselves Willy Wonka - Mr Wonka made 745 individual requests in 4 working days - requests were made by email only and contained abusive and disparaging remarks about staff - Coillte replied to these requests by seeking a (current) address from the applicants and confirmation that the names were the applicants’ actual (legal) names - referring court found that given the quantity of requests made the public authority acted reasonably - referring court found that this exercise was for the purpose of verifying the identity of the applicant, and not for the purpose of determining the interest of the applicant – no information was forthcoming - Coillte regarded each of the requests as incomplete and invalid - none of the purported requesters received the information sought within the one-month timeframe set out in domestic law - Coillte rejected 97 anonymised requests - 81 rejections were appealed to the Commissioner for Environmental Information - Commissioner decided that he did have jurisdiction to consider the appeal and that Coillte was not justified in treating the requests as invalid under article 6(1)(c) of the Access to Information on the Environment Regulations - referring court dealing with appeal on a point of law under art. 13(1) of the 2007 regulations and by originating notice of motion in accordance with Order 84C r. 2(1) RSC – referring court expressed ‘proposed answers’ to the five questions to be referred to the CJEU - the term “request” can only mean a valid request - an applicant is defined in the Directive as “any natural or legal person requesting environmental information” – referring court says that the conferral of rights on natural and legal persons by the directive inherently involves the consequence that the applicant must furnish an actual name and/or physical address - Court was in a position where it had to name John or Jane Doe as pseudonymous notice parties - general doctrine of abuse of rights - provision of false or incomplete information constitutes abuse of rights - waste of public resources - delay to genuine requests for information - may demoralise public officials - if a public authority has reasonable grounds to suspect such abuse it may request further information - fact that such information could conceivably result in speculation as to the interest of the requester is irrelevant – a public authority is entitled to refuse a manifestly unreasonable request by reference to the volume of information sought - questions set out in the judgment referred to the CJEU - article 267 TFEU - substantive determination of the proceedings adjourned pending the judgment of the CJEU – costs reserved.