Ref. Ares(2015)4500501 - 22/10/2015
From:
(EPSO)
Sent:
Friday 26 October 2012 17:49
To:
(SG)
Cc:
EPSO ACCES DOCUMENTS; SG DOSSIERS ACCES;
(SG);
(EPSO);
(EPSO)
Subject:
RE: last opportunity to avoid Ombudsman/Court of Justice -
Re: Confirmatory application - GESTDEM 2012-3258 -
Categories:
Dear
,
Personally, I do not see any reason to be worried about his comments:
I am looking forward to meeting you on Tuesday.
Have a great weekend,
From:
(SG)
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 4:58 PM
To:
(EPSO)
Cc: EPSO ACCES DOCUMENTS; SG DOSSIERS ACCES;
(SG);
(EPSO);
(EPSO)
Subject: FW: last opportunity to avoid Ombudsman/Court of Justice - Re:
Confirmatory application - GESTDEM 2012-3258 -
Dear
,
See the reaction of Mr
to our e-mail below. The following paragraph of
his mail
“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.”
I hope we will find the way out of this case during the meeting. Do you know
why is he copying this e-mail to an EPSO official?
From: SG ACCES DOCUMENTS
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 4:48 PM
To:
(SG)
Subject: FW: last opportunity to avoid Ombudsman/Court of Justice - Re:
Confirmatory application - GESTDEM 2012-3258 -
Réaction de Mr
ci-dessous
Unité SG.B.5 Transparence - Secteur Accès aux documents
From:
[mailto
@
.com]
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 4:46 PM
To: SG ACCES DOCUMENTS;
(EPSO);
(SG)
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:
[mailto
]
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 (+49 1578 8475393) if 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).
Yours sincerely,
Unit SG.B.5, Transparency
European Commission
Document Outline
- From: ALVAREZ CUARTERO Maria Isabel (SG) Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 4:58 PM To: KRIZSAI Renata (EPSO) Cc: EPSO ACCES DO
- From: SG ACCES DOCUMENTS Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 4:48 PM To: ALVAREZ CUARTERO Maria Isabel (SG) Subject: FW: last op
- From: Rainer Typke [mailto:xxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx] Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 4:46 PM To: SG ACCES DOCUMENTS; GUILLARD Gilles
- From: xxxxxxxxxx@xx.xxxxxx.xx To: xxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx Sent: Friday, 26 October, 2012 4:08:18 PM Subject: RE: last opportunity t
- From: Rainer Typke [mailto:xxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx] Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2012 2:29 PM To: SG ACCES DOCUMENTS; GUILLARD Gille
- From: xxxxxxxxxx@xx.xxxxxx.xx To: xxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx Sent: Tuesday, 23 October, 2012 7:57:43 AM Subject: Confirmatory applicat