Council of the European Union
General Secretariat
Directorate-General Communication and Information - COMM
Directorate Information and Outreach
Information Services Unit / Transparency
Head of Unit
Brussels, 10 February 2023
Mr Emilio De Capitani
E-mail: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx
Ref. 23/0323-mj/nb
Request made on: 01.02.2023
Registered on: 02.02.2023
Dear Mr De Capitani,
Thank you for your request for access to documents of the Council of the European Union.1
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On 1 February 2023, you requested access to:
1 - a list of Council documents coded as "WK" and diffused in the Working Groups or Coreper in
December 2022 / January 2023
2 - the TEXTS of the WK documents diffused in the same period and LINKED TO THE EU
LEGISLATIVE PROCEDURES.
Please find attached the following:
- a list of Council documents coded as “WK” and diffused in the Working Parties or COREPER
in December 2022 and January 2023;
- a list of WK documents linked to EU legislative procedure and dif used in the Working Parties
or COREPER in December 2022 and January 2023.
1
The General Secretariat of the Council has examined your request on the basis of the applicable rules:
Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council regarding public access to
European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (OJ L 145, 31.5.2001, p. 43) and the specific
provisions concerning public access to Council documents set out in Annex II to the Council's Rules of Procedure
(Council Decision No 2009/937/EU, OJ L 325, 11.12.2009, p. 35).
Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175 - B-1048 Bruxelles/Brussel - Belgique/België
Tel. +32 (0)2 281 67 10 - www.consilium.europa.eu - xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxxxxx.xx
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As you wil notice, this second list contains 426 documents. We note that you request access to
the
text of these documents.
The General Secretariat of the Council notes that your request covers a very large number of
documents. The principles of good administration and of the sound management of resources, as
well as the need to preserve the continuity of service for all applicants, require that such requests
for access to documents be submitted to a proportionality test. Such a test consists of weighing the
interests of the applicant for access to the documents and the workload which would result from
processing the application in question.
In this case, the processing of your request would entail a manifestly unreasonable amount of
administrative work for the limited human resources in charge of replying to it. This excessive
workload would risk substantially paralysing the proper working of our service and putting at risk
our ability to continue to provide a timely and efficient service to all other applicants.
In view of the above, I regret to have to inform you that our services are not able to assess all the
documents that you have requested access to within the statutory time limits. You are therefore
kindly invited to narrow down the scope of your application and inform us accordingly by
17 February 2023. This can be done for example by spelling out more clearly the objective of your
application and your specific interest in the documents requested, or simply by indicating the
subject matter(s) or the timeframe covered. Feel free to reach out to us to discuss possible
alternatives with a view to finding a suitable arrangement. You can contact me by mail or
telephone +32 2 2816196. In the absence of any reaction from you by the abovementioned date,
we wil close your request.
Yours sincerely,
Fernando FLORINDO
Enclosures: 2
Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175 - B-1048 Bruxelles/Brussel - Belgique/België
Tel. +32 (0)2 281 67 10 - www.consilium.europa.eu - xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxxxxx.xx
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Document Outline