Transparency and access to documents

Transparency and accountability 

Transparency and accountability are important principles of the EBA’s work.  

The EBA publishes a large amount of information about its work and engages frequently with citizens, academics, industry representatives and institutional stakeholders when developing its proposals and carrying out its tasks. 

As a public user of our website you can, for example: 

• Consult minutes of our Management Board, Board of Supervisors and Banking Stakeholder Group

• Read our Work Programme and Annual Reports

• Read correspondence with EU institutions 

• Find out how we avoid and manage staff and governing body conflicts of interest

• See how we spend our budget

• See who our contractors are, and information about ongoing procurements

• See the calendars of our senior management and our meetings held by staff with stakeholders

• Review research workshop papers and contribute to workshops

• Respond to our public consultations

• Find our views on current and past risks in the banking sector

• See the results and analysis from our EU-wide stress tests and transparency exercises

• Explore banking data interactively

• Find out about how we protect consumers and how to complain if you are not satisfied with your financial institution’s products or services

Access to documents 

EU citizens and any other natural or legal person residing or having a registered office in an EU Member State have a right of access to documents produced or held by the EBA. The principles, conditions and exceptions relating to access to documents request are set out in Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. Further details can be found in the EBA’s Decision on Access to Documents (EBA DC 036). 

Requests for access to documents should: 

• Identify the requester and provide their contact details;

• Identify the document or if not possible, specify the nature of the document and the necessary details to enable the EBA to identify whether it holds such a document.

The email address and the address indicated should also be used for requests for access to environmental information held by EBA under Regulation (EC) No 1367/2006. This regulation refers to the application of the provisions of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters to Community institutions and bodies. 

The EBA has 15 working days from registering a request for access to documents to assess and respond to it. This deadline can be extended by a further 15 working days in exceptional circumstances. The EBA may also contact requesters to clarify the nature of the documents requested. 

Request for access to documents is refused or partially refused where the EBA considers that it is not within the scope of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 or if exceptions under that Regulation apply. In those cases, requesters may make a confirmatory application to the EBA to review its initial assessment. The EBA has 15 working days to respond to such a confirmatory application or, in exceptional cases, up to 30 working days.  

If the EBA refuses access, and the person requesting access to documents wishes to contest this decision, they may bring proceedings before the General Court under the conditions specified in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (Article 263). They may also submit a complaint to the European Ombudsman via the European Ombudsman website. 

In order to process requests for access to documents, certain personal data needs to be provided to the Agency. Such data will be processed in accordance with EBA’s privacy notice on Access to Documents requests and in line with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of 23 October 2018 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data.