DG BUDG contacts with Cliffor Chance

The request was refused by Budget.

Dear Budget (BUDG),

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting all documents, including notes of minutes, emails and other correspondence, relating to contacts between staff of DG BUDG and staff of law firm Clifford Chance, between January 2008 and February 2013.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

1 Attachment

Dear Rachel Tansey,
I refer to your emails of 6 and 8 February 2013 and to your request for
access correspondence between DG Budget and the Brussels, Paris and London
offices of law firm Clifford Chance from February 012 to February 2013 and
to our request for a more targeted request of your broadly formulated
demand to which we have not yet received any reply.
We have identified 15 documents falling within the scope of your request.
All these documents relate to cases in the area of enforcement of
competition rules where Clifford Chance was acting as legal representative
of private companies. This correspondence deals more specifically with
payments in relation with such cases.
Before taking a position on whether or not these documents can be made
public, we would like to ascertain that they correspond to the kind of
documents that you seek to obtain. All this correspondence concerns
activities of Clifford Chance in its capacity as a law firm in judicial or
quasi-judicial procedures.
We would be grateful if you could clarify your request, given the nature
of the documents that were identified.
Yours sincerely,  
Emidio Lo Re
 
 
 
   LO RE Emidio
   Commission européenne
   Direction générale du budget
   Unité R1 – Information et communication
   BRE2 14/501
   Avenue d'Auderghem 19
   B-1049 Bruxelles/BELGIQUE      
   Tel.: +32 2 29 52688
   [email address]
 
 
 
 
 
 

1 Attachment

Dear Rachel Tansey,
I refer to your emails of 6 February 2013 and to your request for access
correspondence between DG Budget and the Brussels, Paris and London
offices of law firm Clifford Chance from February 012 to February 2013 and
to our request for a more targeted request of your broadly formulated
demand to which we have not yet received any reply.
We have identified 15 documents falling within the scope of your request.
All these documents relate to cases in the area of enforcement of
competition rules where Clifford Chance was acting as legal representative
of private companies. This correspondence deals more specifically with
payments in relation with such cases.
Before taking a position on whether or not these documents can be made
public, we would like to ascertain that they correspond to the kind of
documents that you seek to obtain. All this correspondence concerns
activities of Clifford Chance in its capacity as a law firm in judicial or
quasi-judicial procedures.
We would be grateful if you could clarify your request, given the nature
of the documents that were identified.
Yours sincerely,  
Emidio Lo Re
 
 
   LO RE Emidio
   Commission européenne
   Direction générale du budget
   Unité R1 – Information et communication
   BRE2 14/501
   Avenue d'Auderghem 19
   B-1049 Bruxelles/BELGIQUE      
   Tel.: +32 2 29 52688
   [email address]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

Dear Ms Tansey,

 

We refer to your email of 6 February 2013, in which you submit a request
for access to all documents, including notes of minutes, emails ans other
correspondence, relating to contacts  between staff of the
Directorate-General Budget and staff of law firm Clifford Chance, between
January 2008 and February 2013.

 

This is a very broadly formulated request, which would require extensive
searches on different locations. It is not really feasable to retrieve
documents on these criteria. In particular, for a significant part of the
period covered by your request, there is no central electronic archiving
of correspondence. Therefore, searches in paper files would be necessary,
which would be very labour-intensive and time consuming.

 

Furthermore, correspondence with law firms may cover very different
subjects and some of it is likely to be confidentiual in nature.

 

Consequently, we are unable to handle your request in its present form. We
would kindly ask you to make a more targeted request.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

BUDG ACCES DOCUMENTS 

 

 

 

 

Dear Budget (BUDG),

There has been some confusion in our correspondence via the asktheeu.org website. In accordance with my original request of 6 February, seeking all documents, including notes of minutes, emails and other correspondence, relating to contacts between staff
of DG BUDG and staff of law firm Clifford Chance, between January 2008 and February 2013, I only received your request for clarification (dated 7 February) today.

Thus, in accordance with your request for a more targeted access to documents request - due to the labour-intensive and time consuming nature of dealing with my request as previously formulated - I will
narrow the time period and scope of my request as follows.

I will reduce the time span of my request to one year, from February 2012 to February 2013. I trust that this will address the issue of having no central electronic archiving of correspondence, for a significant part of the period covered by my original request (Jan 2008-Feb 2013).

Furthermore, since Clifford Chance is a large, multinational law firm, with branches all over the world, I will reduce the scope of my request to cover only correspondence between staff of DG BUDG
and three particular branches of Clifford Chance: the Brussels, Paris and London offices of Clifford Chance.

Given your responses dated 4 and 5 March which seemed to anticipate this narrowing of the scope of my request, I would furthermore like to clarify that this request covers all correspondence, which therefore includes correspondence about payments relating to enforcement of competition rules.

In short, I do seek to obtain documents such as the 15 you refer to as falling under the scope of my request (narrowed to the Brussels, Paris and London Clifford Chance offices, February 2012 to February 2013) that you refer to in your emails of 4 and 5 March.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

3 Attachments

Dear Ms Tansey,

Please find enclosed the response from the DG Budget.

Kind regards,

Marc Ekelmans
_____________________

Dear Budget (BUDG),

There has been some confusion in our correspondence via the
asktheeu.org website. In accordance with my original request of 6
February, seeking all documents, including notes of minutes, emails
and other correspondence, relating to contacts between staff
of DG BUDG and staff of law firm Clifford Chance, between January
2008 and February 2013, I only received your request for
clarification (dated 7 February) today.

Thus, in accordance with your request for a more targeted access to
documents request - due to the labour-intensive and time consuming
nature of dealing with my request as previously formulated - I will
narrow the time period and scope of my request as follows.

I will reduce the time span of my request to one year, from
February 2012 to February 2013. I trust that this will address the
issue of having no central electronic archiving of correspondence,
for a significant part of the period covered by my original request
(Jan 2008-Feb 2013).

Furthermore, since Clifford Chance is a large, multinational law
firm, with branches all over the world, I will reduce the scope of
my request to cover only correspondence between staff of DG BUDG
and three particular branches of Clifford Chance: the Brussels,
Paris and London offices of Clifford Chance.

Given your responses dated 4 and 5 March which seemed to anticipate
this narrowing of the scope of my request, I would furthermore like
to clarify that this request covers all correspondence, which
therefore includes correspondence about payments relating to
enforcement of competition rules.

In short, I do seek to obtain documents such as the 15 you refer to
as falling under the scope of my request (narrowed to the Brussels,
Paris and London Clifford Chance offices, February 2012 to February
2013) that you refer to in your emails of 4 and 5 March.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

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