Jason Milne and Michelle Martin

On 15 January 2026, the Court of Justice issued judgment in C-129/24 Coillte Cuideachta Ghníomhaíochta Ainmnithe following a request for a preliminary ruling by the Irish High Court on the interpretation of Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information as it relates to anonymous requests.

The CJEU held that Member States may require prior identification to ensure proper functioning of procedures. 

Legal background

The Directive provides that Member States are required to make environmental information available to any applicant at their request and without having to state an interest, where ‘applicant’ means any natural or legal person requesting environmental information.

Article 6(1)(c) of the European Communities (Access to Information on the Environment) Regulations 2007-2018, the Irish transposing instrument, provides that a request for environmental information must state the name, address and any other relevant contact details of the applicant. 

Background

Between 10 March and 7 June 2022, Coillte, an Irish commercial forestry undertaking, received 130 requests for access to environmental information, 97 of which were anonymous or pseudonymised using names inspired by film characters and presented in an identical or near-identical format, without provision of a physical address.

Coillte requested the applicants to provide their current addresses and confirm that they had used their real names for the purpose of the requests. Coillte’s view was that the requests did not represent genuine efforts to elicit environmental information but instead formed part of an organised campaign designed to disrupt its operations. When no response was forthcoming, Coillte rejected the requests as invalid and did not provide the environmental information requested.

The applicants subsequently requested Coillte to carry out an internal review of its rejection decisions. Coillte again requested information verifying the applicants’ identity and indicated that a failure to provide the identifying information would lead to the rejection of the requests for internal review.

Between 13 June and 4 July 2022, 81 of the rejection decisions were the subject of appeals to the Commissioner for Environmental Information. On 29 August 2022, the Commissioner, ruling on the first 58 cases of rejection, issued a decision finding that Coillte had not been justified in treating the requests as invalid for the purposes of the AIE Regulations.

Coillte subsequently brought an appeal against the decision of the Commissioner before the High Court.

Request for preliminary review

The High Court found that anonymity could have been used by certain applicants to intentionally abuse the procedure for access to environmental information in order to disrupt Coillte’s operations. The High Court noted that the requests probably originated from a single source or formed part of a coordinated campaign.

The High Court found that Coillte had acted reasonably in determining whether the requests were manifestly abusive by reference to the volume, nature and frequency of other requests made by the same applicant. In particular, the High Court noted that the impact of the requests on Coillte’s operations was significant in terms of expenditure of management time and resources.

The proceedings were stayed, and five questions were referred to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling. The questions asked in essence whether the concept of ‘applicant’ under the Directive, considered in light of the Aarhus Convention, must be interpreted as meaning that it requires a natural or legal person to be identified by his or her actual name and/or a current physical address, as opposed to an anonymous or pseudonymous person and/or an applicant whose contact details are identified by email only.

Decision of the CJEU

The CJEU confirmed that Member States may, in accordance with the principles of equivalence and effectiveness, require prior identification for requests for access to environmental information where such a requirement is justified to maintain the proper functioning of the procedure.

The CJEU noted that one of the objectives of the AIE Regulations, in requiring prior identification, is to enable public authorities to verify that a request for access to environmental information does in fact originate from a natural or legal person and to notify that person of any decision taken on foot of that request and the information requested, where appropriate.

In its judgment, the CJEU emphasised that:

• the Directive does not impose an obligation on an applicant to provide the relevant information for prior identification, nor an obligation on the Member State to request such information;
• disclosing the relevant information for prior identification does not make it impossible in practice or excessively difficult to exercise the right of access to environmental information;
• a Member State does not require prior identification in order to guarantee the right of access to, and dissemination of, environmental information; and
• the Directive does not require public authorities to make environmental information available to any entity other than a natural or legal person, nor are those authorities required, having given such person access to that information, to give access to the information within a short time period following a significant number of identical requests by that same person.

The CJEU observed that, even if the data provided under prior identification could indirectly lead to a public authority or third-party drawing conclusions regarding any interest of those applicants, any such conclusion would not affect the outcome of their requests.

Key takeaways

The decision makes it clear that each Member State can decide whether people seeking environmental information must identify themselves.

In practice, this allows public authorities, if permitted under national law, to put in place measures to ensure the access to environmental information procedure works properly. These measures can help stop anonymous or fake requests that are intended to disrupt the process.

Although the Court did not deal with this point, Advocate General Medina, in her Opinion of 27 March 2025, discussed a concern raised by Coillte about artificial intelligence being used to automatically generate and send access requests. She agreed this was a serious risk but said it was not necessarily linked to anonymity. She stressed that it is up to Member States to put technical protections in place, so public authorities do not process requests sent by automated bots. Her Opinion is not binding on the Court, and future Court decisions may give more guidance on what these technical protections should involve.

Private‑sector organisations in Ireland should be ready for the possibility of more strategic lawsuits as transparency increases due to the filtering out of anonymous or pseudonymous requests. It is not yet clear whether requiring identification will discourage people from requesting environmental information in the public interest because they lose the protection of anonymity.

The case will now go back to the Irish High Court for a final ruling.

Jason Milne and Michelle Martin are partners at William Fry LLP. Nessa Boland also contributed to this article.