Can public access to documents support the transparency of automated decision-making? The European Union law perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT Due to the concerns which are raised regarding the impact of automated decision-making (ADM) on transparency and their potential discriminatory character, it is worth examining the possibility of applying legal measures which could serve to increase transparency of ADM systems. The article explores the possibility to consider algorithms used in ADM systems as documents subjected to the right to access documents in European Union (EU) law. It is focused on contrasting and comparing the approach based on the right to access public documents developed by the Court of Justice of European Union (CJEU) with the approach to the right to access public information as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The analysis shows discrepancies in the perspectives presented by these Courts which result in a limited scope of the right to access public documents in EU law. Pointing out these differences may provide a motivation to clarify the meaning of the right to access information in EU law, the CJEU’s approach remaining as for now incoherent. The article presents the arguments for and ways of bringing together the approaches of the CJEU and the ECtHR in the light of a decreasing level of transparency resulting from the use of ADM in the public sector. It shows that in order to ensure compliance with EU law, it is necessary to rethink the role which the right to access information plays in the human rights catalogue.