Articles 11, 11a Staff Regulations, Gerry Renders

Waiting for an internal review by Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations of their handling of this request.

Dear Directorate-General Enlargement,

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting all correspondence, including emails, and notes/ minutes from any meetings which discuss Gerry Renders‘ employment at DG-Enlargement as it relates to Articles 11 and 11a of the Staff Regulations. Specifically, what assessments have been made of Mr Renders‘ personal interests, considering his previous work for East West Consulting and European Consultants Organisation (ECO). Are there any matters which he has been relieved from dealing with, under Article 11a 2 of the Staff Regulations?

Yours faithfully,

Manuel Melzer

Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your request dated 20/03/2013. We hereby acknowledge receipt of your application for access to documents, which was registered on 20/03/2013 under reference number GestDem 2013/1532.

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 15/04/2013. In case this time limit needs to be extended, you will be informed in due course.

Yours faithfully,

The ELARG-ACCDOC team

-----Original Message-----
From: Manuel Melzer [mailto:[FOI #430 email]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 10:15 AM
To: ELARG-ACCDOC
Subject: access to information request - Articles 11, 11a Staff Regulations, Gerry Renders

Dear Directorate-General Enlargement,

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as
developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting all
correspondence, including emails, and notes/ minutes from any
meetings which discuss Gerry Renders‘ employment at DG-Enlargement
as it relates to Articles 11 and 11a of the Staff Regulations.
Specifically, what assessments have been made of Mr Renders‘
personal interests, considering his previous work for East West
Consulting and European Consultants Organisation (ECO). Are there
any matters which he has been relieved from dealing with, under
Article 11a 2 of the Staff Regulations?

Yours faithfully,

Manuel Melzer

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Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations

2 Attachments

Dear Mr Melzer,

 

Further to your above mentioned request, please find attached the reply of
Mr Sannino, Director General DG Enlargement.

 

Best regards,

 

[1]Description: Description: cid:image001.png@01CD70C8.87B727F0

Sandrine Durant
HRM Assistant

European Commission
DG Enlargement
Unit ELARG.E.1: Human Resources & IT: Headquarters & Delegations
CHAR 06/108
B – 1049 Brussels/Belgium
Tel.: +32-2-29 53789
sandrine.durant[2]@ec.europa.eu

 

References

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mailto:[email address]

Dear DG Enlargement (ELARG),

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Enlargement (ELARG)'s handling of my FOI request 'Articles 11, 11a Staff Regulations, Gerry Renders'.

On March 20 I made an access to documents request to the DG Enlargement concerning the employment of Mr Gerry Renders (No 2013/1532, http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/artic...). Below my request:

"Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting all correspondence, including emails, and notes/ minutes from any meetings which discuss Gerry Renders‘ employment at DG-Enlargement as it relates to Articles 11 and 11a of the Staff Regulations. Specifically, what assessments have been made of Mr Renders‘ personal interests, considering his previous work for East West Consulting and European Consultants Organisation (ECO). Are there any matters which he has been relieved from dealing with, under Article 11a 2 of the Staff Regulations?"

I hereby submit a confirmatory application for this request. You denied access to the requested documents on the following grounds: "Having examined the documents requested under the provision of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to documents, I regret to inform you that your application cannot be granted, as disclosure is prevented by exceptions to the right of access laid down in Article 4(b) of this Regulation".

I was very surprised by this response of DG Enlargement invoking protection of personal data, as there have been many successful access to documents requests regarding the screening for potential conflicts of interest when employing new officials or when officials apply for permission for post-employment activities, in accordance with Article 11, 11a and Article 16 of the Staff regulations, respectively. Cases where relevant documents were made available, if necessary with sensitive personal data having been expunged. This would be in full accordance with the intention of my request. Recent examples where this practice has been applied are requests 2012/2311, 2012/2690 and 2012/5259 (see post script).

As a result, I do not understand why, in this particular case, the documents cannot be released to me, at least in part. Other Commission DGs have not considered that there was a problem to disclose the equivalent documents. I should also point out that I am not requesting private data such
as personal email addresses or telephone numbers, but documents which concern Mr Renders in his professional capacity as an official employed by DG Enlargement. I therefore would like to make a confirmatory application to DG Enlargement that this response is re-evaluated.

I look forward to hearing from you and I hope to receive the documents requested as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Manuel Melzer

PS: I have sent a copy of this request to the Transparency Unit of the Secretary-General of the European Commission

PPS: Here is some more information on the example cases mentioned above:
Petra Erler: 2012/2690, http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/staff...
full access to some documents (especially on the internal decision making process of the DG) has been granted and partial access to documents with personal information. This approach would be fully in accordance with my request.
DG Human Resources wrote: "The undisclosed parts in documents (...) containing certain personal data such as the personal address and phone number, have to be refused on the basis of Article 4(1)(b) of the Regulation".
The same procedure has been used in these cases:
Jörgen Holmquist: 2012/5259, http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/staff...
Fabio Colasanti: 2012/2311, http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/staff...

PPPS: A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.asktheeu.org/request/articles...

Manuel Melzer left an annotation ()

On 7 June 2013, a prompt was sent to the EC Secretariat-General, Unit SG/B/5, Transparency (who are in charge of internal reviews of the handling of access to documents request), as no response has been received.