Campania Regional Administrative Court: in the face of a legitimate request for access to documents accepted by the Public Administration, the prior opinion of the Italian Data Protection Authority should not be requested.

The sixth section of the Campania Regional Administrative Court (Naples, Section VI, 30 January 2026, no. 677) has issued a ruling intended to set a precedent in the delicate balance between the right of access and the protection of personal data. With ruling no. 677/2026, the administrative judges clarified that the protection of privacy rights cannot be an automatic formal foothold to paralyze the transparency of the Public Administration.

The Board of Arbitrators has criticised the practice of some administrations to systematically subordinate the disclosure of documents to prior opinions of the Privacy Italian Data Protection Authority or to unjustified procedural delays.

According to the Regional Administrative Court, if the request for access (pursuant to Law no. 241/1990) is legitimate and there is no concrete risk of prejudice to the counterparties, the entity has the obligation to proceed without activating external bureaucratic automatisms: it is not necessary to automatically involve the Privacy Italian Data Protection Authority if the balance between transparency and confidentiality clearly leans in favor of the right of access. The right to privacy cannot be used for instrumental purposes and data protection must not be transformed into a pretext for circumventing the obligations of publicity of administrative action.

The Campania Regional Administrative Court recalls that limitations on the right of access are exceptions and, as such, must be interpreted strictly and never extensively. On the other hand, although the protection of confidentiality is a fundamental value, it cannot in any case translate into a bureaucratic obstacle aimed at paralyzing the exercise of a constitutionally oriented right such as that of the knowledge of public documents.