44 ANNUAL REPORT 2014 advice and assistance. For instance, the regulation cannot be used in cases about access to environmental information, as these cases must be decided pursuant to the Environmental Information Act, meaning that it is the previous Access to Public Administration Files Act which applies. This was put to the test in a case (Annual Report 2014, Case No. 2014-27) where a journalist had complained to the Ombudsman because the Ministry of Transport had denied access to documents about the transfer of the Danish Coastal Authority from the Ministry of Transport to the Ministry of the Environment. The request for access was denied with reference to precisely the regulation on ministerial advice and assistance. According to the Ombudsman, a great deal spoke in favour of the information on the Danish Coastal Authority’s transfer of responsibility falling under the very wide concept of ‘environmental information’. This meant that the regulation on ministerial advice and assistance was not applicable. The Ombudsman recommended that the Ministry of Transport reopen the case and make a new decision pursuant to the Environmental Information Act. Subsequently, the Ministry made a new decision and gave the journalist full access to the desired information. In this case, section 24 was not applicable at all. Another case (Annual Report 2014, Case No. 2014-14) illustrates that even in matters of ministerial advice and assistance, there can still be a right to (partial) access. The duty to provide information about a case’s factual basis, etc. – the so-called extraction duty – also applies to ministerial advice and assistance documents. The Danish Customs and Tax Administration (SKAT) had denied a journalist access to a memo which the Administration had sent to the Ministry of Taxation for the Minister’s information. The Tax Appeals Agency agreed that access should be denied. Although as a starting point the memo could be exempted from access according to the regulation on ministerial advice and assistance, the Ombudsman found that a considerable part of the memo contained information about the factual grounds of the case. Therefore, this information should have been given to the journalist. The Ombudsman recommended that a new decision be made. In a new decision, the Tax Appeals Board gave the journalist access to the whole memo apart from a single paragraph.