Freedom of information (FOI) is a human right and an important concept for the transparency and accountability of governments and public administrations. It is also essential for democracy. Despite a long research lineage on FOI laws and their use by citizens, existing empirical knowledge is still limited regarding the inner workings of FOI requests. This limitation applies particularly to the European Union (EU) and the documents possessed by its various institutions. To help at addressing this limitation, the paper presents a few empirical observations about FOI requests in the EU context. By using a dataset containing 500 requests made between 2022 and early 2023, the insight presented cover the EU institutions targeted, the requesters making FOI requests, and particularly the bureaucratic delays in handling of FOI requests. According to results based on a regression analysis, the bureaucratic delays vary according to both the EU institutions and the individual requesters.