This is an HTML version of an attachment to the Freedom of Information request 'EPSO-Databases'.


Ref. Ares(2015)4496352 - 22/10/2015
From: 
SG DOSSIERS ACCES 
Sent: 
Wednesday 31 October 2012 12:17 
To: 
 (SG) 
Subject: 
FW: last opportunity to avoid Ombudsman/Court of Justice - 
Re: Confirmatory application - GESTDEM 2012-3258 - 
 
Attachments: 
OmbudsmanEPSOaccesstodocuments.pdf 
Chère Isabel, 
Tu trouveras, ci-après, un courriel envoyé par M. 
 nous informant de 
l'introduction d'une plainte auprès du Médiateur concernant le traitement apporté à sa 
demande confirmative – Gestdem 2012/3258. 
Bien à toi, 
 
From: 
 [mailto:r
.com]  
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2012 12:04 PM 
To: SG ACCES DOCUMENTS; 
 (EPSO); 
 (SG) 
Cc: BEARFIELD Nicholas David (EPSO) 
Subject: Re: last opportunity to avoid Ombudsman/Court of Justice - Re: 
Confirmatory application - GESTDEM 2012-3258 - 
 
Dear Mr 
, dear 

as announced in our previous communication, I have just filed an Ombudsman 
complaint because we haven't reached an agreement on when and how you 
will hand over the data which I requested on Aug. 21 until Oct. 31, noon. I am 
attaching the complaint to this mail to give you the opportunity to read it 
ahead of time, before the Ombudsman contacts you. 
I still hope that your re-examination, which I assume is still ongoing, will lead 
to your decision to grant my confirmatory request from August 21, 2012 
without court proceedings becoming necessary. However, as I said, I will 
discuss the option of court proceedings with my lawyer next Thursday. I have 
already given her the contents of the Ombudsman complaint and its 
attachments. 
With best regards, 
 
-- 
Dr. 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
From: "Rainer Typke" <
.com> 
To: xxxxxxxxxx@xx.xxxxxx.xx, "

<
@ec.europa.eu>, "

<
@ec.europa.eu> 
Sent: Friday, 26 October, 2012 4:46:29 PM 
Subject: Re: last opportunity to avoid Ombudsman/Court of Justice - 
Re: Confirmatory application - GESTDEM 2012-3258 - 
 
Dear Mr. 

 
1. I did not say that I don't want to wait for the outcome of your re-
examination; I only said that your re-examination cannot take forever if you 
want the process to be simple, cost-effective,  and with minimal public 
embarrassment. 
2. You already confirmed in your reply to my initial request that the electronic 
documents in question indeed do exist (on August 9, someone called RK or 
RKD wrote to me on behalf of the director, Bearfield: "EPSO does indeed 
possess the information referred to in your request, in the form of data stored 
electronically in its various IT systems and databases." - EPSO/RKD(2012) 
1130795) That is, you confirmed that there are indeed existing electronic 
documents which are in the scope of Regulation 1049/2001 and contain the 
requested information. They are split into several documents instead of being 
present as one single table. Because of this, I requested parts of those separate 
existing documents which do not trigger an exception under Art. 4 in my 
confirmatory request for access to information. Your sudden change of mind 
about the existence of the requested documents comes as a bit of a surprise to 
me. 
 
I am certain that the approximately 4 months you have spent on this issue 
would have been more than enough time for very thoroughly analyzing the 
request and responding appropriately, that is, releasing the requested subsets 
of documents. Even the remaining one and a half weeks until I meet my 
lawyer should be more than enough time for doing what you are obliged to do 
under Regulation (EC) 1049/2001, and the time until Oct. 31 should be 
enough time for deciding on your course of action. As a computer scientist, I 
have a pretty good idea of the technical effort needed on your side. If I worked 
for EPSO and was familiar with the databases, it would take me less than an 
hour to export the required subsets of documents. Without prior knowledge, it 
would probably still take me less than 3 days, assuming that EPSO processes 
data according to normal practices. Coming to the conclusion that granting the 
request is necessary is also a relatively straightforward process. 
 
I hope you will understand that there is a strong public interest in the 
disclosure of the requested data as early as possible, and that I therefore should 
not wait passively for indefinite amounts of time. If the data show flaws in the 
ongoing competition, it would be much better for everyone involved, 
especially for EPSO, to correct any such flaws before the end of the 
competition rather than inventing complicated, costly corrective actions after 
the reserve lists have been drawn up. If the data, on the other hand, show that 

EPSO performed flawlessly, EPSO should be interested in this fact to become 
publicly known sooner rather than later. Either way, acting fast is in 
everybody's interest. 
 
I still hope that you will be able to finish your internal consultations in time 
for a simple, cost-effective process of handing over the requested data without 
Ombudsman or court involvement. 
 
With best regards (and wishing you a pleasant weekend), 
 
 
 
 
From: xxxxxxxxxx@xx.xxxxxx.xx 
To: 
.com 
Sent: Friday, 26 October, 2012 4:08:18 PM 
Subject: RE: last opportunity to avoid Ombudsman/Court of Justice - 
Re: Confirmatory application - GESTDEM 2012-3258 - 
 
Dear Mr 

  
I refer to our holding reply of 23 October 2012 and your e-mail of 25 
October 2012. 
  
As you correctly state, your e-mail was dated 17 September 2012. The 
date of 4 October 2012 was mentioned by mistake. I apologise for having 
referred to a wrong date. 
  
I have carefully examined your comments regarding the handling of your 
application.  
  
In this regard, I confirm that the Secretariat General has not yet taken a 
decision regarding your request  pursuant to Regulation 1049/2001. As I 
explained in the above-mentioned holding reply, the document(s) to which 
you requested access, does not exist. On this basis, we replied to your 
confirmatory application informing you it was considered as being devoid 
of purpose. In light of your insistence, in your e-mail of 17 September 
2012, that the requested document(s) exist(s), we have launched an 
internal consultation with the responsible service. 
  
I am sorry to hear  that you do not wish to wait for the outcome of our re-
examination. I initiated this re-examination with your interests in mind and 
with the intention to take due account of your rights. 
  
Unfortunately, as the subject of your request concerns issues of 
a technical nature and of great complexity, we have not been able to reply 


in a shorter time limit to your e-mail and at this stage I am not in a position 
to comment on the results of the re-examination. 
  
Nonetheless, I expect to be able to reply to your e-mail shortly. 
  
Your sincerely  
  
             
On behalf of 
     
 
European Commission - Secretariat General 
Unit SG.B.5, Transparency 
 
  
 
 
From: Rainer Typke [mailto:
com]  
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2012 2:29 PM 
To: SG ACCES DOCUMENTS; 
 (EPSO); 
 (SG) 
Cc: BEARFIELD Nicholas David (EPSO) 
Subject: last opportunity to avoid Ombudsman/Court of Justice - Re: 
Confirmatory application for access to documents pursuant to Regulation 
1049-2001 - GESTDEM 2012-3258 - 
 
  
Dear Mr. 
, dear Mr. 
 
I did not send you any mail on October 4, 2012, so I assume you are 
referring to my e-mail to you from September 17, 2012. 
As you probably know, your "third way" of neither granting nor 
rejecting a confirmatory application for access to documents which is 
older than 15 working days is not foreseen under Article 8 of 
Regulation (EC) 1049/2001. I am pasting the text of this article below 
for your convenience. A confirmatory application can only be either 
granted or refused. Not granting it after 15 working days counts as 
rejection. In case of a rejection, the reasons must be stated and the 
applicant must be informed about the remedies. 
 
Because you are not doing what you are obliged to do under 
Regulation (EC) 1049/2001, I have prepared (but not yet submitted) an 
Ombudsman complaint and scheduled a meeting with my lawyer. 
 
However, I it is not my goal to make this procedure unnecessarily 
complicated for you or for myself, or to acquire fame as some sort of 
"Pachtitis II.". Therefore, I am willing to hold off with the Ombudsman 
complaint until the end of October 2012.  
  

If, by Wednesday noon next week (Oct. 31), we have reached an 
agreement on when my confirmatory request for access to information 
will be granted, and if the information requested in the confirmatory 
application will be made available to me no later than November 7, 
2012, I will not submit this complaint to the Ombudsman and also not 
talk to my lawyer about this case. I currently plan to meet my lawyer 
on November 8 for the purpose of discussing court proceedings. To be 
honest, so far you have given me the impression that court proceedings 
are inevitable, but since choosing this route is not an ideal solution, 
neither for you nor for me, I would like to suggest this last possibility 
of saving you and me a lot of hassle. Please feel free to call me on my 
cell phone 
 you would like to discuss when and 
how to deliver the requested data. 
 
With best regards, 
 
 
 
Article 8 
Processing of confirmatory applications 
1. A confirmatory application shall be handled promptly. 
Within 15 working days from registration of such an application, 
the institution shall either grant access to the document 
requested and provide access in accordance with Article 10 
within that period or, in a written reply, state the reasons for 
the total or partial refusal. In the event of a total or partial 
refusal, the institution shall inform the applicant of the 
remedies open to him or her, namely instituting court proceedings 
against the institution and/or making a complaint to the 
Ombudsman, under the conditions laid down in Articles 230 
and 195 of the EC Treaty, respectively. 
2. In exceptional cases, for example in the event of an 
application relating to a very long document or to a very large 
number of documents, the time limit provided for in paragraph 
1 may be extended by 15 working days, provided that the 
applicant is notified in advance and that detailed reasons are 
given. 
3. Failure by the institution to reply within the prescribed 
time limit shall be considered as a negative reply and entitle the 
applicant to institute court proceedings against the institution 
and/or make a complaint to the Ombudsman, under the relevant 
provisions of the EC Treaty. 
 
-- 
 
 
 
 
 


  
 
 
From: xxxxxxxxxx@xx.xxxxxx.xx 
To: 
.com 
Sent: Tuesday, 23 October, 2012 7:57:43 AM 
Subject: Confirmatory application for access to documents 
pursuant to Regulation 1049-2001 - GESTDEM 2012-3258 - 
 
Dear Mr 

Kindly find herewith a letter concerning your e-mail dated 04/10/2012 
(GESTDEM 2012-3258). 
         
urs sincerely, 
  
  
Unit SG.B.5, Transparency  
European Commission 
 
  
 

Document Outline