Correspondence and minutes related to the EU CO2 emission standards for new passenger cars
Dear Climate Action,
Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting documents which contain the following information:
For the period between 1 January 2007 to date:
- a list of all meetings and/or calls held by the Directorate-General for Climate Action, including any Cabinet Members and/or officials, with industry association representatives during which EU legislation on CO2 emission standards for cars and vans were discussed.
The list should include: date, individuals attending and organisational affiliation, as well as the issues discussed;
- all minutes and other reports of these meetings and/or calls;
- all documents prepared for the purpose of the meetings issued both in preparation and after the meetings took place.
- all correspondence, including attachments (i.e. any emails, mail correspondence or telephone call notes) between the Directorate-General for Climate Action, including any Cabinet Members and/or officials, and any industry association representative discussing EU legislation on CO2 emission standards for cars and vans.
To the extent possible, I prefer the documents in electronic format.
Should my request be denied wholly or partially, I kindly request to explain the denial or all redactions referring to specific exemptions in the regulation. Also I would expect the partial release of documents, in case of partial exemption according to article 4.6.
Please confirm receipt of this application. I look forward to receiving your reply within 15 business days, as established by the regulation.
Yours faithfully,
Julia Loder (German citizen)
Institute for Economy and the Environment
Müller-Friedberg-Strasse 6/8
CH-9000 St. Gallen
Dear Ms Loder,
Thank you for email from 5 November 2021. We hereby acknowledge receipt of your application for access to documents, which was registered on 10 November under reference number GESTDEM 2021/6708.
In accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, your application will be handled within 15 working days. The time limit will expire on 1 December 2021. In case this time limit needs to be extended, you will be informed in due course.
You have lodged your application via a private third-party website, which has no link with any institution of the European Union. Therefore, the European Commission cannot be held accountable for any technical issues or problems linked to the use of this system.
Please note that the private third party running the AsktheEU.org website is responsible and accountable for the processing of your personal data via that website, and not the Commission. For further information on your rights, please refer to the third party’s privacy policy.
We understand that the third party running the AsktheEU.org website usually publishes the content of applicants’ correspondence with the Commission on that website. This includes the personal data that you may have communicated to the Commission (e.g. your private postal address).
Similarly, the third party publishes on that website any reply that the Commission will send to the email address of the applicants generated by the AsktheEU.org website.
If you do not wish that your correspondence with the Commission is published on a private third-party website such as AsktheEU.org, you can provide us with an alternative, private e-mail address for further correspondence. In that case, the Commission will send all future electronic correspondence addressed to you only to that private address, and it will use only that private address to reply to your request. You should still remain responsible to inform the private third-party website about this change of how you wish to communicate with, and receive a reply from, the Commission.
For information on how we process your personal data visit our page Privacy statement – access to documents.
Yours sincerely,
Access to Documents team
European Commission
Directorate-General for Climate Action
Av. de Beaulieu 24
1049 Brussels
Dear [email address],
As the time limit for my enquiry has expired yesterday, I would kindly like to ask what the status of my application for access to documents is? I would be grateful for a short feedback.
Many thanks.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Loder
Dear Ms Loder,
We refer to your e-mail of 5 November 2021 in which you make a request
for access to documents, registered on 10 November 2021 under the
above-mentioned reference number.
According to our first research, your application concerns a very large
number of documents and, therefore, need to be assessed individually. Such
a detailed analysis cannot be carried out within the normal time limits
set out in Article 7 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001.
Furthermore, many of the documents originate from third parties. The
analysis of these documents, together with the need to consult the third
parties concerned in accordance with Article 4(4) of Regulation (EC) No
1049/2001, cannot be expected to be completed within the normal time
limits set out in Article 7 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001.
However, Article 6(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 also provides for a
possibility to confer with an applicant informally with a view to finding
a fair solution when an application relates to large number of documents.
In accordance with the case law of the EU Courts, such a solution can only
concern the content or the number of documents requested, not the deadline
for replying. This means that the scope of the request must be reduced in
a way that would enable its processing within the extended deadline of 15
+ 15 working days.
Based on the above-mentioned provision, we would kindly ask you to specify
the objective of your application and your specific interest in the
documents requested, and whether you could narrow down the scope of your
application by providing a concrete list of industry association
representatives for which you would be interested and to reduce time scope
(if possible, limited to a period of 2 years maximum), so as to reduce it
to a more manageable amount of documents.
Furthermore, in order to help you to narrow down your application, please
note that the following categories of documents have been identified as
falling under the scope of your request:
1. Shared position papers or correspondence on policy matters
2. Minutes of meetings
3. Correspondence of technical/administrative nature: related to the
CO2 monitoring exercise, pooling, derogations, and eco-innovations
applications pursuant to obligations set out in articles 6, 7, 10 and 11
of Regulation (EU) 2019/631 of the European Parliament and of the Council
of 17 April 2019 setting CO2 emission performance standards for new
passenger cars and for new light commercial vehicles, and repealing
Regulations (EC) No 443/2009 and (EU) No 510/2011 (to be noted that public
information on these topics are accessible on CIRCABC).
4. Correspondence of administrative nature, e.g. organization of
Expert Group meetings (public information also accessible on CIRCABC);
5. Ad-hoc correspondence on the interpretation of Regulation (EU)
2019/631 and related legislation.
Please note that points 3, 4 and 5 correspond to individual
regulatory/administrative procedures that car manufacturers might have
been routinely part of, as required by the legislation in force. In order
to reduce the scope of the application, we would appreciate if you could
indicate whether you are interested on the regulatory/administrative
category (listed above as points 3, 4 and 5). The exclusion of some
categories could reduce the scope of the application to a more manageable
amount of documents.
Therefore, we would kindly ask you if you could reduce the scope of the
application by indicating the list of industry representatives and the
category of documents of your interest and propose a more reduced
timeframe for the request.
In order to enable us to respect the time-limits of Regulation (EC) No
1049/2001, we would ask you for a swift reply to our invitation to propose
a fair solution, within five working days at the latest:
· by e-mail to: [1][email address]
In the absence of a reply within five working days, we will unilaterally
restrict the scope of your application to those parts that can be dealt
with within the extended deadline of 30 working days, counting from the
registration of your application.
Thank you in advance for your understanding.
Yours faithfully,
Access to Documents team
[2]cid:image001.png@01D7E6F1.97896630
European Commission
Directorate-General for Climate Action
Av. de Beaulieu 24
1049 Brussels
References
Visible links
1. mailto:[email address]
Dear [email address],
Thank you very much for your fast response and the provided details on the status of my request.
In order to make my request more managable within the time limit, I propose two specifications to my request:
1. My interest concerns the two categories of documents (1) shared position papers or correspondence on policy matters and (2) minutes of meetings. Thus, for my request you can discard documents of the types 3 to 5.
2. For the moment, the timeframe 2007-2009 between the announcement of binding EU regulation on CO2 emission standards and the agreement on EU Regulation 443/2009, is most important for me. If you could also provide me with documents from 2010 onwards after the time limit of 15+15 days, I would be very grateful. Getting access to the entire timeframe between 2007 and today is of utmost importance for my research. However, I cannot specify industry associations in this first step, as I would like to base my selection of industry associations to focus on in my further research on the documents from the years 2007-2009 you will hopefully provide me access to. If necessary, I may lodge separate requests for the documents from 2010 onwards after having viewed documents for the timeframe 2007-2009.
I hope this information helps to make my request more managable.
If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to check back.
Many thanks.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Loder
Dear Ms Lodger,
We refer to your request for access to documents requests dated 5 November
2021, registered on 10 November 2021 under the above mentioned reference
numbers.
We are not in a position to complete the handling of your applications
within the time limit of 15 working days, which expired on 1 December
2021.
In accordance with Article 7(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding
public access to documents we have to extend the time limit by 15 working
days, the new deadline is set for 22 December 2021.
We apologise for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Sincerely,
Access to Documents team
[1]cid:image001.png@01D77180.D293E7A0
European Commission
Directorate-General for Climate Action
Av. de Beaulieu 24
1049 Brussels
References
Visible links
Dear [email address],
I hope you have started well into the new year.
As the extension of the time limit for my request from 5 November 2021 has expired, I kindly would like to ask when I may receive an answer to my request?
Many thanks and all the best for 2022.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Loder
Dear Ms Loder,
We wish you a Happy New Year and we apologise for the late reply.
We are now consulting the third parties as required by Article 4, paragraph 4 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. We will provide you with the reply as soon as possible.
We sincerely apologise for the delay and the inconveniences that this can create.
Sincerely,
Access to Documents team
European Commission
Directorate-General for Climate Action
Av. de Beaulieu 24
1049 Brussels
Dear [email address],
Many thanks for your notification and the update on the status of my request. I thank you for your efforts linked to my request and look forward to receiving the reply.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Loder
Dear Ms Loder,
Enclosed please find a copy of our reply. We apologise for the delay in
our reply.
According to standard operational procedure, the reply is usually also
sent to you by registered post. Please note, however, that due to the
extraordinary health and security measures currently in force during to
the COVID-19 epidemics, which include the requirement for all Commission
non-critical staff to telework, we are unfortunately not in a position to
follow this procedure until further notice.
We would therefore appreciate if you could confirm receipt of the present
e-mail by replying to [1][email address].
Kind regards,
Access to Documents team
European Commission
Directorate-General for Climate Action
Av. de Beaulieu 24
1049 Brussels
References
Visible links
1. mailto:[email address]
Dear [email address],
Many thanks for your response including documents related to my request.
I hereby confirm receipt of your email.
Kind regards,
Julia Loder