Ref. Ares(2020)2075857 - 16/04/2020
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
RESEARCH EXECUTIVE AGENCY
Legal Affairs, Internal Control and Reporting
Head of Sector
Brussels,
REA C0.1
Ms Fieke Jansen
Donaustrasse 54,
12043 Berlin
GERMANY
Sent by registered email to:
ask+request-7702
xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject:
Your application for access to documents on the Speaker Identification
Integrated Project (SiiP) Grant agreement (607784) - Ares(2020)1207776
Dear Ms Jansen,
We refer to your access to documents request submitted to the Research Executive Agency (REA)
on 24 February 2020 via the website AskTheEU.org and registered on 03 March 2020 under
reference number Ares(2020)1327312.
A.
SCOPE OF YOUR REQUEST
In your application concerning the project SiiP (grant agreement nr. 607784) you stated:
“…I am requesting all documents held by European Union bodies and agencies which contain any
of the following information, in full or in part:
Information related to the Speaker Identification Integrated Project (SiiP) Grant agreement ID:
607784. (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/607784)
Specifically ANY information related to the:
1. The scientific evaluation and European Commission approval of the above-mentioned research
project
2. The Ethics Annex to the proposal submitted by the partner.
3. The ethics evaluation of the project conducted pursuant to the Horizon 2020 rules.
4. The Description of Work included in the Grant Agreement signed by the European Commission
and the lead partner.
5. All periodic reports submitted to REA by the lead partner.
6. All periodic reports submitted to REA by the project Ethics Advisor or Ethics Advisory Board.
7. All deliverables submitted by the lead partner to REA pursuant to the Grant Agreement.
8. All other documents concerning the implementation of the project submitted by the lead partner
to REA.
9. Human rights impact assessment on the project done under the framework of Horizon 2020 10.
Data protection impact assessment on the project done under the framework of Horizon 2020 11.
Agence exécutive pour la recherche, B-1049 Bruxelles / Uitvoerend Agentschap Onderzoek, B-1049 Brussel – Belgium. Telephone:
(32-2) 299 11 11.
Office: COV2-08/28 - Tel. direct line (32-2) 2991510 - Email: xxxxxxx.xxxxxx@xx.xxxxxx.xx
The pilot implementation (also referred to as testing) of the project Speaker Identification
Integrated Project (SiiP) with the four law enforcement partners; Ministério da Justiça (Portugal),
Ministero Della Difesa (Italy), Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (United Kingdom), and the
Bundeskriminalamt (Germany).
12. From ALL the Periodic Progress Report and Annual Report I would like to know ALL the
following information on
12 a) The origin of data that was used to train and test the SIIP model and any safeguards that
ensure that the data origin was lawfully collected for the purpose of training this model.
12 b) Measures taken to safeguard the collection and processing of biometric data for both the
training of the SIIP model and the testing with the four law enforcement partners. Considering
voice samples are considered sensitive personal identifiable data under both the GDP and the Law
Enforcement Directive.
12 c) The language that the SIIP project analysed during this projected.
12 d) Any identified bias discovered in the SIIP project towards specific languages and dialects
12 e) Any training manuals that were created for the SIIP project
12 f) Report and evaluation on the testing of the project with the four law enforcement partners;
Ministério da Justiça (Portugal), Ministero Della Difesa (Italy), Mayor’s Office for Policing and
Crime (United Kingdom), and the Bundeskriminalamt (Germany). This should include:
◦ the department in the law enforcement partners the SIIP project was tested with
◦ the time, date and length in which the project was tested,
◦ the type of crime the test was focusses on,
◦ any reference in the report to the observations, results and challenges when SIIP was tested in
these four jurisdictions
◦ any ethical or human rights impact assessment the four law enforcement partners conducted for
the testing of the SIIP project
◦ any legal challenges that the SIIP project and/or four law enforcement partners encountered
during the project period
◦ any recommendations based on the testing, piloting, experimenting or implementation of SIIP
12 g) All documents stating reasons the Police Service of Northern Ireland ended their
participation in this project.”
On 11 March 2020, after examination of the scope of your request, we have informed you that your
application concerned a very large number of documents, which needed to be individually assessed,
and the majority of which originates from third parties, which need to be consulted. In light of the
above, we have informed you that we would not be in the position to handle your request within the
time limits set out in Article 7 of the Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 and therefore, in accordance
with Article 6(3) of the Regulation, we have conferred with you to find a fair solution.
In this context, you were invited to specify the objective of your request, your specific interest in the
requested documents, and to narrow down the scope of your request (i.e. the subject matters and/or
timeframe covered), so as to reduce it to a more manageable amount of documents. In order to help
you to narrow down your request we have provided the categories of documents with number of
documents identified as falling within the scope of your request:
Proposal documents: 2
Evaluation documents: 2
Grant Agreement Annexes: 1
2
Deliverables: 56
Technical reports: 9
Ethical reports: 1
Correspondence on the project: 1
We specified that the length of these documents varies widely, from 1 to more than 150 pages and
that a reasonable estimate would be that the requested documents would be more than 70 documents
and represent at least 3900 pages.
We also stated that according to our preliminary estimates, and subject
inter alia to others tasks that
the REA staff concerned are likely to have to deal with during the same period, the third-party
consultation and the length and/or complexity of the documents at stake, the handling of your
request would take around 100 working days.
It followed that REA would be able to handle a maximum of 15 documents within the remaining
days from the extended deadline of 30 working days counting from the date of registration of your
application.
On 17 March 2020, you replied that you wanted to clarify your request and asked for the following
documents:
“- 2 evaluation documents
- 1 grant agreement annexes
- 1 ethical report
- Deliverable documents in the time period of the the testing of the project with the four law
enforcement partners; Ministério da Justiça (Portugal), Ministero Della Difesa (Italy), Mayor’s
Office for Policing and Crime (United Kingdom), and the Bundeskriminalamt (Germany).”
On 23 March, we informed you that with regard to your last point on deliverables, we have
identified 3 deliverables; moreover, we considered that a fair solution has been reached and
informed you that REA will reply to your request by 17 April 2020.
This request is handled within the scope of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access
to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents1.
B.
DISCLOSURE OF THE REQUESTED DOCUMENTS
As a preliminary point, I would like to stress that security research aims at fostering a collaborative
process to explore new ideas and technologies. The funded EU security research projects (the
projects SiiP - 607784 in this case) do not terminate with “development and deployment” of such
ideas and technologies.
1 Regulation (EC) N° 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to
European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, OJ L145, 31.05.2001, page 43, hereinafter “Regulation N° 1049/2001.
3
The results of EU security research projects are only assessed based on their scientific and
technological soundness and not linked to decisions related to the effective implementation years
after the research work is completed. The objective of such research projects is to explore different
ideas of how to address certain security challenges that Europe is facing and foster a collaborative
process where different actors across the EU test their ideas.
Research does not deliver products to the market or enforce their uptake by public authorities. EU
security research projects achieve a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) between 6 – 8 (see General
Annexes for the definition2 ). To be noted that “development and deployment” are outside of the
TRL scale.
After the completion of a research project, beneficiaries, who are the owner of the results, would
still need to further invest their own resources for some years before “developing and deploying”
tools to the market. Before deciding to further invest, those companies would need to consider the
scientific reliability of the research and also the political, societal, ethical and financial implications,
together with the need to respect the international, EU and national legislation in force.
Having examined the documents requested under the provisions of Regulation (EC) N° 1049/2001
regarding public access to documents, we consider that the documents which are listed in Annex 1
are related to your request.
In Annex 1 we specify the documents to be disclosed, partially disclosed or to which public access
cannot be granted according to the exceptions provided in the above mentioned Regulation. The
legal grounds for calling on these exceptions are detailed for each of the documents listed in the
Annex 1 to this letter.
Concerning the exceptions to the right of access laid down in Articles 4(1)(b) and 4(2) first indent
of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, namely the protection of public interest as regards the protection
of privacy and the integrity of the individual, in particular in accordance with EU legislation
regarding the protection of personal data, and the protection of commercial interests of a natural or
legal person including intellectual property we recall the following:
Protection of privacy and integrity of the individual
Pursuant to Article 4(1)(b) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, access to a document has to be
refused if its disclosure would undermine the protection of privacy and integrity of the individual, in
particular in accordance with EU legislation regarding the protection of personal data.
The applicable legislation in this field is Regulation (EU) No 2018/1725 of the European Parliament
and of the Council of 23 October 2018 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the
processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free
movement of such data, and repealing Regulation (EC) 45/2001 and Decision No 1247/2002/EC3
(hereinafter “Regulation 2018/1725”).
2 https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2014_2015/annexes/h2020-wp1415-annex-g-trl_en.pdf
3 Official Journal L 205 of 21.11.2018, p. 39
4
The documents to which you requested access, contain personal data of individuals, such as the
name, surname, email or other personal data of staff members of the consortium of the
abovementioned project
and/or of other individuals related to the project. Indeed, Article 3(1) of
Regulation 2018/1725 provides that personal data ‘
means any information relating to an identified
or identifiable natural person […]’. The Court of Justice has specified that any information, which
by reason of its content, purpose or effect, is linked to a particular person is to be considered as
personal data4.
In its Judgment in Case C-28/08/P (Bavaria Lager)5, the Court of Justice ruled that when a request is
made for access to documents containing personal data, the Data protection Regulation becomes
fully applicable.
Pursuant to Article 9(1)(b) of Regulation (EC) 2018/1725 ‘
personal data shall only be transmitted
to recipients established in the Union other than Union institutions and bodies if ‘[t]he recipient
establishes that it is necessary to have the data transmitted for a specific purpose in the public
interest and the controller, where there is any reason to assume that the data subject’s legitimate
interests might be prejudiced, establishes that it is proportionate to transmit the personal data for
that specific purpose after having demonstrably weighed the various competing interests’. Only if
these conditions are fulfilled and the processing constitutes lawful processing in accordance with the
requirements of Article 5 of Regulation 2018/1725, can the transmission of personal data occur.
According to Article 9(1)(b) of Regulation, REA has to examine the further conditions for a lawful
processing of personal data only if the first condition is fulfilled, namely if the recipient has
established that it is necessary to have the data transmitted for a specific purpose in the public
interest. It is only in this case that REA has to examine whether there is a reason to assume that the
data subject’s legitimate interest might be prejudiced and, in the affirmative, establish the
proportionality of the transmission of the personal data for that specific purpose.
We consider that, in your request, you do not put forward any arguments to establish the necessity to
have the data transmitted for a specific purpose in the public interest. Therefore, REA does not have
to examine whether there is a reason to assume that the data subject’s legitimate interest might be
prejudiced. Nevertheless, please note that there are no reasons to assume that the legitimate interest
of concerned individuals would not be prejudiced by disclosing their personal data. In the present
case, disclosure of the personal data of persons involved in the project in question would harm their
privacy.
Consequently, I conclude that, pursuant to Article 4(1)(b) of Regulation 1049/2001, access cannot
be granted to the personal data contained in the document requested.
4 Judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 20 December 2017 in C
ase C-434/16, Peter Nowak v Data
Protection Commissioner, request for a preliminary ruling, paragraphs 33-35
, ECLI:EU:C:2017:994. 5 Judgment of 29 June 2010 in case C-28/08/P, European Commission v The Bavaria Lager Co. Ltd, EU:C2010:378,
paragraph 59.
5
The exception laid down in Article 4(1)(b) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, the protection of
privacy and the integrity of the individual, is an absolute exception that does not have to be balanced
against the public interest in disclosure.
Protection of commercial interests of natural and legal persons
The documents, listed in Annex 1 to this letter to which this exception applies, contain sensitive
commercial information of the entities participating in the project not in the public domain in
particular, the reference to the project consortium’s financial data, intellectual property, knowhow,
methodologies, technologies, potential inventions, working modalities.
The public disclosure of this information would thus seriously undermine the consortium
commercial interests. Accordingly, the exception in Article 4(2) first indent of Regulation (EC) No
1049/2001, has to be invoked and access to this part of the document has to be refused.
Such exception applies, unless there is an overriding public interest in disclosure of the requested
documents. Such an interest must, first, be a public interest and secondly, outweigh the harm caused
by disclosure. In your application, you did not bring forward any argument to justify the existence of
an overriding public interest in releasing the requested document. In this instance, we have found no
elements that could indicate the existence of such an overriding public interest in the sense the
Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 that would outweigh the need to protect the commercial interests
identified in this reply.
Therefore, the exception laid down in Article 4(2) first indent of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001
applies to the above-mentioned documents (or part of it) that are not disclosed to you.
In accordance with Article 7(2) of Regulation 1049/2001, you are entitled to make a confirmatory
application requesting the Director of REA to review this position.
Such a confirmatory application should be addressed within 15 working days upon receipt of this
letter to Mr Marc TACHELET, Director of REA, at the following address:
Research Executive Agency
Covent Garden building
COV2 – 08/52
Place Charles Rogier, 16
1210 Brussels
Or by e-mail to
: xxxx.xxxxxxxx@xx.xxxxxx.xx
Yours sincerely,
(e-signed)
Barbara KAMPIS
6
Enclosures:
- Annex 1 - List of documents related to the request and legal grounds regarding disclosure
- Ethics Screening Report – project SiiP (607784)
- Evaluation Summary Report – project SiiP (607784)
- Initial Information on the outcome of the evaluation of proposals – project SiiP (607784)
- D9.4 SIIP Field Testing and End-User Training Final Report
- D10.7 SIIP_ POC and Field tests- Summary movie
Electronically signed on 14/04/2020 20:55 (UTC+02) in accordance with article 4.2 (Validity of electronic documents) of Commission Decision 2004/563
7