DG SANCO contacts with Clifford Chance

Health and Food Safety did not have the information requested.

Dear Health and Consumers (SANCO),

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 SANCO and staff of law
firm Clifford Chance, between January 2008 and February 2013.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

Health and Food Safety

Dear Ms Tansey,

We refer to your email of 6 February 2013, in which you submit a request for access to all documents, including notes of minutes, emails and other correspondence, relating to contacts between staff of the Directorate-General Health and Consumers (SANCO) 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 feasable 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 very 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,

Catherine Garreaud
European Commission
Health and Consumers Directorate-General
B-1049 Brussels
[email address]

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Dear Health and Consumers (SANCO),

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 SANCO and three particular branches of Clifford Chance: the Brussels, Paris and London offices of Clifford Chance.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

Health and Food Safety

Dear Madam,

We refer to your e-mail dated 8 February 2013, in which you limit your request for access to documents to a period of one year.

We regret to inform you that no documents were found that would correspond to the description given in your application. We are, therefore, unable to handle your application.

Yours faithfully,

Catherine Garreaud
European Commission
Health and Consumers Directorate-General
B-1049 Brussels
[email address]

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