Access to documents request: 2022-04-21 meeting between Laszlo Kristoffy and Trans Adriatic Pipeline
Dear Sir or Madam,
Referring to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on public access to EU documents and to the 'Aarhus Convention' I would herewith like to ask for access to the following:
All documents—including but not limited to correspondence, emails, minutes, notes (hand written or electronic), audio or video recordings, verbatim reports, operational conclusions, lines to take, briefings, and presentations—related to the meeting on April 21 between Laszlo Kristoffy and Trans Adriatic Pipeline.
In consideration of the environment and the current circumstances with the COVID pandemic I would prefer to receive documents electronically.
I would like to make clear I prefer you produce the documents on a rolling basis. At no point should the Commission's search for—or deliberations concerning—certain documents delay the production of others that the Commission has already retrieved and elected to produce.
Should my request be denied wholly or partially, please explain the denial or all deletions referring to specific exemptions in the regulation. Also I would expect the partial release of documents in case of partial exemption according to article 4.6. I reserve the right to appeal.
Please confirm having received this application. I look forward to your reply within 15 business days, according to the regulation.
If anything is unclear or would benefit from further discussion please do not hesitate to contact me by email or on +44 7525 592 738. My address for any written correspondence necessary is Barnaby Pace, Global Witness, Rue Belliard 53, 1000, Bruxelles, Belgique.
Thank you for your assistance.
Yours sincerely
Barnaby Pace
Dear Mr Pace,
Thank you for your e-mail. We hereby acknowledge receipt of your application for access to documents, which was registered on today under reference number GESTDEM 2022/3193.
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 23 June 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 sincerely,
Access to Documents Team
European Commission
DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations NEAR Access to Documents [DG NEAR request email]
Dear Mr Pace,
We refer to your request for access to documents, initially registered on
1 June 2022 under the above-mentioned 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 expired on the 23 June.
An extended time limit is needed for the purpose of internal
consultations.
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 July 2022.
We are confident that we will be able to provide you with a reply shortly.
Again, we apologise for this delay and for any inconvenience this may
cause and we thank you for your understanding.
Yours sincerely,
[1]cid:image001.gif@01D4DF06.B8C47E70
European Commission
DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations
NEAR Access to Documents
[2][DG NEAR request email]
Dear Mr Pace,
We refer to your request for access to documents, initially registered on
1 June 2022 under the above-mentioned reference number.
We are afraid that the reply to your request for access to documents has
required longer than usual due to internal consultations involving our
Cabinet given that the documents from the meetings requested are related
to them.
We are confident that you will receive a reply shortly.
Again, we apologise for the delay and for any inconvenience it may have
caused.
Yours sincerely,
[1]cid:image001.gif@01D4DF06.B8C47E70
European Commission
DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations
NEAR Access to Documents
[2][DG NEAR request email]
From: NEAR ACCDOC <[DG NEAR request email]>
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2022 12:45 PM
To: Barnaby Pace <[FOI #11065 email]>
Cc: NEAR ACCDOC <[DG NEAR request email]>
Subject: RE: access to documents request - Gestdem 2022/3193 - extension
deadline
Dear Mr Pace,
We refer to your request for access to documents, initially registered on
1 June 2022 under the above-mentioned 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 expired on the 23 June.
An extended time limit is needed for the purpose of internal
consultations.
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 July 2022.
We are confident that we will be able to provide you with a reply shortly.
Again, we apologise for this delay and for any inconvenience this may
cause and we thank you for your understanding.
Yours sincerely,
[3]cid:image001.gif@01D4DF06.B8C47E70
European Commission
DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations
NEAR Access to Documents
[4][DG NEAR request email]
Dear Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations,
Please pass this on to the person who reviews confirmatory applications.
I am filing the following confirmatory application with regards to my access to documents request 'Access to documents request: 2022-04-21 meeting between Laszlo Kristoffy and Trans Adriatic Pipeline'.
The deadline for response is now long overdue, by law, under all circumstances, the authority should have responded by now.
A full history of my request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/acces...
Yours faithfully,
Barnaby Pace
Dear Mr Pace,
Thank you for your email.
We understand that the request registered under the reference GESTDEM 2022/3193 is having a deadline longer than usual. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and we should have explained at an earlier stage that this request is being handled together with GESTDEM 2022/3579 that you submitted to DG NEAR and was registered at a later stage, however referring to the same topic with the same interlocutors.
Although we understood that your preference was to receive each reply separate, due to reasons of efficiency and administrative burden and as internal consultations are with the same interlocutors, it was the best approach that will ensure that our reply is consistent as to assess both dossiers at the same time helps on the assessment (for example, if something was not to be disclosed in the first dossier but now it has been made public in the second would need to be disclosed also in the document/s belonging to the first dossier, also sometimes documents overlap when topic/interlocutor of meetings are the same, etc.).
Based on Article 7 of the Regulation 1049/2001 you are on your right to launch a confirmatory application for request GETSDEM 2022/3193, which will be handled as usual by Secretariat-General. However, we would like to kindly request that you wait to have the full answer to both replies by the time of the deadline of the request GESTDEM 2022/3579 (3 August). If you are not satisfied with the reply, you will still have your rights to launch a confirmatory application on which Secretariat-General would perform an assessment of the documents disclosed by DG NEAR.
Confirmatory applications have an initial deadline to reply of 15 working days from registration, therefore you may not have any answer before 11 August.
Please let us know if you would still like to proceed to launch the confirmatory on the request GESTDEM 2022/3193 or you would prefer to receive a reply fully covering both GESTDEM 2022/3193 and GESTDEM 2022/3579 by 3 August.
Yours faithfully,
NEAR ACCDOC TEAM
European Commission
DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations
NEAR Access to Documents
Dear [email address],
Thank you for your reply and explanation of the handling of this request. I am willing to wait until the deadline for GESTDEM 2022/3579 (3 August) to receive a response for both requests.
Yours sincerely,
Barnaby Pace
Dear Mr Pace,
We refer to your request for access to documents, registered under the
above-mentioned reference number as well as to the request register unde
2022/3193.
The reply to your request is drafted and in process to be signed by our
hierarchy, given the period of the year and that the signatory chain
contains different steps it may take still some days to reach you.
We are confident that you will receive a reply shortly.
Again, we apologise for the delay and for any inconvenience it may have
caused.
Yours sincerely,
[1]cid:image001.gif@01D4DF06.B8C47E70
European Commission
DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations
NEAR Access to Documents
[2][DG NEAR request email]