DG JUST contacts with Clifford Chance

The request was partially successful.

Dear Justice (JUST),

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as
developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting all documents,
including notes of minutes, emails and other correspondence,
relating to contacts between staff of DG JUST and staff of law
firm Clifford Chance, between January 2008 and February 2013.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

Justice and Consumers

Dear Ms Tansey

 

We refer to your e-mail of 6 February 2013, in which you submit a request
for access to all documents, including notes of minutes, e-mails and other
correspondence, relating to contacts between staff of the
Directorate-General JUSTICE and staff of law firm Clifford Chance, between
January 2008 and February 2013.

 

This is a very broadly formulated request, which would require extensive
searches on different locations. It is not really feasible to retrieve
documents on these criteria. In particular, for a significant part of the
period covered by your request, there is no central electronic archiving
of correspondence. Therefore, searches in paper files would be necessary,
which would be very labour-intensive and time consuming.

 

Furthermore, correspondence with law firms may cover different subjects
and some of it is likely to be confidential in nature.

 

Consequently, we are unable to handle your request in its present form. We
would kindly ask you to make a more targeted request.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

Maria José Almeida

Legal Officer
DG JUSTICE

 

 

Dear Justice (JUST),

In accordance with your request for a more targeted access to documents request - due to the labour-intensive and time consuming nature of dealing with my request as previously formulated - I will narrow the time period and scope of my request as follows.

I will reduce the time span of my request to one year, from February 2012 to February 2013. I trust that this will address the issue of having no central electronic archiving of correspondence, for a significant part of the period covered by my original request (Jan 2008-Feb 2013).

Furthermore, since Clifford Chance is a large, multinational law firm, with branches all over the world, I will reduce the scope of my request to cover only correspondence between staff of DG JUST and three particular branches of Clifford Chance: the Brussels, Paris and London offices of Clifford Chance.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

Justice and Consumers

5 Attachments

Dear Ms Tansey,
Please find attached reply from DG JUSTICE to your request for access to
documents registered under reference mentioned above.
 
Kind regards
 
European Commission
DG JUST
Unit 01
 
Mo 59 07/27
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium