European Union – Environment. The Court of Justice of the European Union made a preliminary ruling, deciding, among other things that art 5(2) of Directive (EC) 2003/4 should be interpreted as meaning that the charge for supplying a particular type of environmental information could not include any part of the cost of maintaining a database, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, used for that purpose by the public authority, but could include the overheads attributable to the time spent by the staff of the public authority on answering individual requests for information, properly taken into account in fixing the charge, provided that the total amount of the charge did not exceed a reasonable amount.