Trade and Tech Council
Dear Communications Networks, Content and Technology,
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:
- Exchanges on TTC (Trade and Technology Council) with DG Justice & DG RTD between June, 2021 - January 2022
Yours faithfully,
Clothilde Goujard
Rue de la Loi 62, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
Dear Madam,
Thank you for your e-mail of 31/01/2022. We hereby acknowledge receipt of
your application for access to documents, which was registered on
31/01/2022 under reference number GESTDEM 2022/665.
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 21/02/2022. 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 faithfully,
Access to documents team (cr)
SG.C.1
Transparency
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Link: [3]themeData
Link: [4]colorSchemeMapping
[5]Your applications for access to documents - RefGestDem 2022/0665,
2022/0667, 2022/0673 and 2022/0693 - Ares(2022)1241878 (Please use this
link only if you are an Ares user – Svp, utilisez ce lien exclusivement si
vous êtes un(e) utilisateur d’Ares)
Dear Sir/Madam,
We refer to your e-mails of 31 January 2022, wherein each of you make a
request for access to documents pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001
of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding
public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents
(‘Regulation 1049/2001’), registered under the above-mentioned reference
numbers.
The requests cover the period between June 2021 and January 2022 and
concern:
GestDem 2022/0665: ‘ Exchanges on TTC (Trade and Technology Council) with
DG Justice & DG RTD’
GestDem 2022/0667: ‘Exchanges on the Transatlantic Trade & Technology
Council with DG GROW & DG CLIMA’,
GestDem 2022/0673: ‘All briefings, minutes, scoping papers, deliverables
for the EU-US Trade and Technology Council held by DG Connect’,
GestDem 2022/0693: ‘Exchanges on TTC with DG Trade’
The circumstances of the introduction of these requests originating from
applicants belonging to the same organisation, their timing, their scope,
as well as their wording give us the impression that a very wide-scoped
request is split in parts and introduced as seemingly separate requests.
In this regard, we also refer to another access to documents request
(GestDem 2021/7392) submitted by another applicant belonging in your
organisation and with a scope similar to the scope of the abovementioned
requests. Due to the wide scope of that request we negotiated with the
applicant of request GestDem 2021/7392 a fair solution. It now seems that
the abovementioned requests of 31 January 2022 are submitted in a
coordinated way with the view to covering the parts of the initial request
under GestDem 2021/7392.
The General Court confirmed in its Ryanair judgment (Judgment of the
General Court of 10 December 2010, Ryanair v Commission, T-
494/08,EU:T:2010:511,paragraph 34) that Article 6(3) may not be evaded by
splitting an application into several, seemingly separate, parts. As
stated by the EU Courts, the European Commission needs to respect the
principle of proportionality and ensure that the interest of the applicant
for access is balanced against the workload resulting from the processing
of the application for access in order to safeguard the interests of good
administration.
Similarly to the above-mentioned cases underlying the case-law of the EU
Courts on wide-scoped requests, DG CONNECT cannot, in this case, accept an
artificial splitting of a wide-scoped request into simultaneous, seemingly
separate individual applications, as this would result in a circumvention
of Article 6(3) of Regulation 1049/2001, and the need for the Commission
to ensure that to balance the interest in public access to the documents
against the burden of work so caused, in order to safeguard the interests
of good administration(Judgment of the Court of First Instance of 13 April
2005, Verein für Konsumenteninformation v Commission, T-2/03,
EU:T:2005:125, paragraph 102).
Due to the scope of your requests, the work needed to deal with your
application would involve various DG CONNECT Units and cover the following
steps:
- Multiple searches of documents and consultations within DG CONNECT,
- Retrieval, individual analysis of the documents and establishment of the
final and complete list of the documents falling under the scope of your
request,
-Scanning of the documents which are not in pdf format,
- Preliminary individual assessment of the content of the documents in
light of the exceptions contained in Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001,
- Assessment of the further procedural steps to undertake, for example
whether third party consultations should be made,
- For many of the documents, (possibly) third party consultations under
Article 4(4) of Regulation 1049/2001 and consultations with the other
concerned Directorates- General /services,
- Final assessment of the documents in light of the comments received,
- Redaction of those parts of the documents to which one or several
exceptions apply,
- Preparation and finalisation of the reply for the request,
- Preparation of the reply and the documents for dispatch.
Article 6(3) of the Regulation 1049/2001 provides that, in the event of an
application relating to a very long or a very large number of documents,
the institution concerned may confer with the applicant informally with a
view to finding a fair solution. In accordance with the case law of the
Union Courts, the proposal for a fair solution aims to balance the
interest of the applicant against the workload resulting from the
processing of the application in order to safeguard the interests of good
administration (Judgments of 6 December 2001, Council v Hautala, Case C
353/99 P, EU:C:2001: 661, para. 30, and of 2 October 2014, Strack v
Commission, Case C 127/13 P, EU:C:2014:2250, para.27).
Taking this into account and based on the above-mentioned provision, we
would kindly ask all of you to specify the objective of your wide-scoped
request, your specific interest in the requested documents and whether
you could narrow down the scope of your request, so as to reduce it to a
more manageable amount of documents.
As already indicated in our fair solution proposal in the context of the
request under GestDem 2021/7392, according to our estimate more than
several hundred documents would fall under your wide scoped request.
Please note that the documents identified concern communication in the
context of various Working Groups. You may find a list of all working
groups here:
[6]https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscor...
In case that you are interested in documents relating to a specific
working group, you could also indicate the working group.
Please note also that some of the emails may contain annexes which need to
be individually assessed and which we would therefore count separately.
Taking into account the other ‘access to documents’ requests being handled
within DG CONNECT at the same time, the global workload of the concerned
staff during the same period, the human resources available and the need
to safeguard good administration and with a view to providing you with a
reply to your request as soon as possible we consider that we would be
able to deal with in total a maximum of 15 documents falling within your
combined wide scoped request.
Please also note that the documents will need to be assessed on the basis
of Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001. In this regard, it is possible that
access needs to be refused for several documents as your request concerns
documents related to the international relations between the EU and US.
We would kindly ask you for a swift response to our proposal for a fair
solution. Please respond within three working days, i.e. by 23 February
2022 eob at the latest. Please send your response by email to the
following address: [7][email address]
In the absence of a reply within three working days, we will unilaterally
restrict the scope of your application to up to a maximum of 15 documents
as set out above.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
The DG CONNECT Access to Documents Team
[8]cid:image001.png@01D3AF19.959C0670
European Commission
DG Connect – ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
BU25 – Avenue de Beaulieu 25
B-1160 Brussels/Belgium
References
Visible links
1. file:///tmp/cid:filelist.xml@01D824E8.CF6F9A80
2. file:///tmp/cid:editdata.mso
3. file:///tmp/~~themedata~~
4. file:///tmp/~~colorschememapping~~
5. https://webgate.ec.testa.eu/Ares/documen...
6. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscor...
7. mailto:[email address]
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Link: [3]themeData
Link: [4]colorSchemeMapping
[5]Holding reply - Your application for access to document RefGestDem
2022/0665 - Ares(2022)1287677 (Please use this link only if you are an
Ares user – Svp, utilisez ce lien exclusivement si vous êtes un(e)
utilisateur d’Ares)
Dear Madam,
We refer to your request for access to documents, registered under the
abovementioned reference number.
Your application is currently being handled. However, we will not be in a
position to complete the handling of your application within the time
limit of 15 working days, which expires today.
An extended time limit is needed as the application concerns a very large
number of documents.
Therefore, we have to extend the time limit with 15 working days in
accordance with Article 7(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding
public access to documents. The new time limit expires on 14 March 2022.
We apologize for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Yours sincerely,
DG CONNECT Access to Documents Team
[6]cid:image001.png@01D3AF19.959C0670
European Commission
DG Connect – ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
BU25 – Avenue de Beaulieu 25
B-1160 Brussels/Belgium
References
Visible links
1. file:///tmp/cid:filelist.xml@01D82727.2B84C940
2. file:///tmp/cid:editdata.mso
3. file:///tmp/~~themedata~~
4. file:///tmp/~~colorschememapping~~
5. https://webgate.ec.testa.eu/Ares/documen...
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Link: [3]themeData
Link: [4]colorSchemeMapping
[5]Your application for access to documents RefGestDem 2022/0665 -
Ares(2022)1862676 (Please use this link only if you are an Ares user –
Svp, utilisez ce lien exclusivement si vous êtes un(e) utilisateur d’Ares)
Dear Madam,
We refer to your request for access to documents, registered under the
abovementioned reference number.
Unfortunately, we are not able to send the reply to your application
within the given time limit, which expires today.
You will receive the answer to your application as soon as possible.
We apologize for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Yours faithfully,
DG CONNECT Access to Documents Team
[6]cid:image001.png@01D3AF19.959C0670
European Commission
DG Connect – ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
BU25 – Avenue de Beaulieu 25
B-1160 Brussels/Belgium
References
Visible links
1. file:///tmp/cid:filelist.xml@01D837B5.3B1B6910
2. file:///tmp/cid:editdata.mso
3. file:///tmp/~~themedata~~
4. file:///tmp/~~colorschememapping~~
5. https://webgate.ec.testa.eu/Ares/documen...
Advance copy by e-mail and registered mail with acknowledgement of receipt
Dear Madam, Sir,
Please find attached document Ares(2022)2198276 regarding "Your
applications for access to documents - GestDem 2022/0665, 2022/0667,
2022/0673 and 2022/0693" sent by Mr Roberto Viola, General Director of DG
CONNECT on 25/03/2022.
Best regards,
European Commission
DG CONNECT — ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Avenue de Beaulieu, 25
B-1160 Brussels/Belgium