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


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 
 
  
 

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