Documents relating to EU-US trade talks (since July 2018)
Dear Madams & Sirs,
Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I would like to request the following documents:
1) a list of Commission services and officials as well as US regulatory agencies and officials who have been involved in EU-US discussions on regulatory issues in the context of the “executive working group”, which was set up by US President Donald Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in July 2018 to explore a path forward on trade talks between the EU and the US.
2) a list of meetings of DG Trade officials and/or representatives (including the Commissioner and her Cabinet) and representatives of individual companies and/or industry federations such as BusinessEurope, the European Services Forum (ESF), AmCham EU, the Transatlantic Business Council (TABC), the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries (EFPIA), the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), FoodDrinkEurope and the European Automobile Manufacturers' Council (ACEA), in which EU-US trade relations and possible new negotiations have been discussed (since July 2018). The list should include the names of the individuals and organisations attending; the date; and any agendas / minutes / notes produced.
3) all correspondence (including emails) between DG Trade officials and/or representatives (including the Commissioner and her Cabinet) and representatives of companies and/ or industry federations, relating to EU-US trade relations and possible new negotiations (since July 2018).
I would appreciate if you could take the Code of Good Administrative Behaviour and the Charter on Human Rights into account when responding to this request. Also, I would be very grateful if you would release documents when they are retrieved, rather than waiting until the full reply is ready.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Pia Eberhardt
CEO
Rue d’Edimbourg 26
Bruxelles 1050
Belgium
Dear Ms Eberhardt,
Thank you for your e-mail dated 28/11/2018. We hereby acknowledge receipt
of your application for access to documents, which was registered on
29/11/2018 under reference number GestDem 2018/6323.
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 20
December 2018. In case this time limit needs to be extended, you will be
informed in due course.
You have lodged your application via the AsktheEU.org website. Please note
that this is 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 European Commission. For further information
on your rights, please refer to the third party’s privacy policy.
We understand that the third party running that website usually publishes
the content of applicants’ correspondence with the European Commission on
that website. This includes the personal data that you may have
communicated to the European 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 your correspondence with the European Commission to be
published on the AsktheEU.org website, you can provide us with an
alternative, private e-mail address for further correspondence. In that
case, the European Commission will send all future electronic
correspondence addressed to you only to that private address.
Yours faithfully,
Access to Documents Team
[1]http://ec.europa.eu/trade/images/ec-logo...
European Commission
DG TRADE
Dear Ms Eberhardt,
We refer to your request for access to documents registered on 29/11/2018
under the reference number GestDem 2018/6323.
Your application is currently being handled. However, due to the heavy
workload on a large number of requests , we will not be in a position to
complete the handling of your application within the time limit of 15
working days, which has just expired.
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 22/01/2019. An
extended time limit is needed as your application concerns documents
possibly held by different Services which must be consulted.
We apologise for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Yours sincerely,
Access to Documents Team
[1]http://ec.europa.eu/trade/images/ec-logo...
European Commission
Directorate-General for Trade
[2][DG TRADE request email]
Dear Ms Eberhardt,
We refer to your application for access to documents registered by DG
TRADE on 29 November 2018 with reference number GestDem 2018/6323.
Having gone in more detail through the relevant files, we have established
that your application concerns quite a large number of documents. After
having performed the first extensive search and consultation with relevant
Units we have identified 53 meetings (see table attached) as regards point
2 of your request. Please note that there is at least one document
(report/minutes) related to each of the identified meetings and all the
documents need to be assessed individually. Moreover, as regards point 3
we have identified 16 different documents. A detailed analysis of all the
already identified documents cannot be carried out within the normal time
limits set out in Article 7 of Regulation 1049/2001.
However, Article 6(3) of Regulation 1049/2001 also provides for the
possibility to confer with applicants in order to find a fair solution
when an application relates to a very long document or concerns a very
large number of documents.
In accordance with the case law of the EU Courts, such a solution can only
concern the content or the number of documents applied for, not the
deadline for replying. This means that the scope of the request must be
reduced in a way that would enable its treatment within the extended
deadline of 15 + 15 working days.
Based on the above-mentioned provision, we would kindly ask you to specify
in more detail the objective of your request and your specific interest in
the documents requested, and whether you could narrow down the scope of
your request, so as to reduce it to a more manageable amount of documents.
In order to help you to narrow down your request, we would like to invite
you to reduce the scope to 25 documents, for example 25 records from the
attached table, or you could also narrow the scope by reducing the period
you are interested in or specifying the type of stakeholder.
To give you an idea of the overall timeline, and taking into account other
applications for access to documents and other tasks that the staff
concerned are likely to have to deal with during the same period, we would
expect to be able to process up to 25 documents within 30 working days.
This includes:
- assessment of the content of the documents in light of the
exceptions of Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001;
- third-party consultations under Article 4(4) of Regulation
1049/2001;
- final assessment of the documents in light of the comments
received;
- drafting of the reply;
- redaction of those parts of the documents to which one or
several exceptions apply(ies);
- internal approval of the draft decision on your request;
- preparation of the reply and the documents for dispatch.
We would kindly ask you for a swift reply to our invitation for a fair
solution. In the absence of a reply within five working days, expiring on
9 January 2019 we will unilaterally restrict the scope of your application
to those parts that can be dealt with within the extended deadline of 30
working days.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation and understanding.
Yours sincerely,
Access to Documents team
[1]cid:image001.png@01D44AB6.FC35E200
European Commission
DG TRADE
Dear Madams & Sirs,
thank you very much for your messages from 21 December and for providing me with the list of meetings.
Please apologise my late response due to the holiday period. I hope that you can still take it into account, even though it comes two days late, particularly as I have never before been confronted with such a request and deadline from the Commission.
May I first confirm that I understand your proposal correctly? Are you suggesting that I identify 25 documents, which you will release during the extended timeframe of the request (so, by 22 January) and that the remaining documents will be released at some point after that deadline?
In that case, I would appreciate if you could prioritise the following 25 documents (referring to the minutes of the meetings from the list you sent to me): 8, 10, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 30, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 50, 51, 52.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to provide you with a similar specification regarding the 16 different documents you mention regarding point 3 in my request. For this, I would require more information regarding these 16 documents, which is missing, unfortunately, from your response.
Yours sincerely,
Pia Eberhardt
Dear Mrs Eberhardt,
Thank you for your reaction to our fair solution proposal.
I am afraid that we were not clear enough in our previous communication so
let me explain you the suggested proceedings once again. The purpose of
our proposition is to reduce the scope of the request because at present
the assessment of already identified documents and the further treatment
of your request could not be carried out within the normal time limits set
out in Article 7 of Regulation 1049/2001. Therefore, we suggest to reduce
the number of documents processed within this request to 25 items in
total, i.e. 25 documents altogether. In this way, the amount of work
related to treatment of this request could possibly be performed during
the extended deadline of 30 working days which is now the approach to deal
with large scope requests. Having said that, we would therefore like to
ask you to confirm your below choice of 25 documents from the provided
list that will be exclusively dealt with within the request GESTDEM
2018/6323.
Yours sincerely,
Access to Documents team
[1]cid:image001.png@01D44AB6.FC35E200
European Commission
DG TRADE
Dear Access to Documents team,
thank you very much for the clarifications.
Unfortunately, I cannot accept a reduction of the scope of my request to just 25 documents.
Allow me to remind you that transparency in trade talks – including transparency about what interest representatives discuss with the Commission and the documents they exchange with it – facilitates citizen participation by ensuring access to information and the means to take part in the process of governance to which citizens are subject. This has been stressed by the European Ombudsman, who has also encouraged the Commission to proactively publish meeting agendas and records of meetings it holds with stakeholders, as well as their submissions.
Nonetheless, I have again looked at the information you released and come to the conclusion that I can do without 9 of the meeting reports, which are mentioned there. These are the reports relating to the following meeting number in the document you sent me: 2, 3, 15, 16, 24, 33, 38, 46, 49. While it is not as large a reduction of the scope of the request as you had asked for, it is nonetheless a reduction.
I would be happy to go through a similar process for the documents relating to point 3) in my request, in order to reduce its scope, if you could provide me with more information as to their sender and topic.
Otherwise, I would appreciate if you could deal with the 25 priority documents within the extended deadline of 30 working days as you suggested.
I am prepared to wait longer for the remaining documents and hope that, overall, this is a fair solution proposal, which you can accept.
Yours sincerely,
Pia Eberhardt
Dear Mrs Eberhardt,
We have now assessed more thoroughly the individual documents included in the list we shared with you to have a better understanding of the resources necessary to process them within time limits laid down in Regulation 1049/2001. In particular it seems, that the meeting reports (i.e. documents 1-52) are in fact easier to process than assumed and can be faster treated than the remaining set of 17 documents. Given that and in light of your particular interest in the reports of meetings with private stakeholders, we can cover in our reply all meeting reports (indicated by you) plus up to 4 additional documents from the attached list of identified correspondence.
In this respect, please note that two meetings should be excluded from the list: one of them in the end did not take place and the other was related to different issues.
Could you please kindly confirm that this is agreeable to you. And if so, please indicate which 4 additional documents from the attached list you wish to receive .
Your sincerely
TRADE ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Dear Madams and Sirs,
thank you for getting back to me with further information on the 17 documents, which relate to the third part of my request, as well as the update and a new proposal. I really appreciate your efforts.
Regarding the 17 documents, allow me to inform you that in addition to the one where you already indicated this, at least three more can be found in the public domain. This might be useful for future requests you are handling:
Document 1: http://euratex.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/...
Document 5: http://www.europeanboatingindustry.eu/ne...
Document 6: https://www.orgalim.eu/sites/default/fil...
In light of this, I have identified the following 4 documents as priority documents for the third part of my request: 3, 4, 7 and 8. While I can live without the remaining documents, I would still like to ask you to also cover the remaining 9, which cannot be found in the public domain, in your response – even if in a second batch coming later than the 4 priority documents.
Also, I am pleased to read that the meeting reports can be assessed faster than you initially thought. Could you inform me about when I can expect these documents? In a previous message you had indicated that you could release 25 of these documents within the extended deadline. However, that deadline passed last week (22 January).
Your sincerely,
Pia Eberhardt
Dear Ms Eberhardt,
Thank you for your reply. We take note of your particular interest in
documents 3, 4, 7 and 8. The reply to this request will accordingly cover
all meeting reports as well as the additional 4 documents you indicated.
As explained in previous correspondence, however, we are not in a position
to process the remaining 9 documents identified in this reply in a second
batch but will work on the ones set out above as a fair solution for this
case.
We are doing our best to finalise the reply as quickly as possible.
Your sincerely,
TRADE ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Dear Madams and Sirs,
could you please give me an indication of when I can expect the release of the requested documents?
I sent my request nearly 3 months ago. In your email form before Christmas you indicated that you would be able to process 25 documents within the extended deadline.
As this extended deadline passed one month ago (22 January), I thought it’s only fair to ask you for an update on where things stand.
Thank you for your understanding.
Yours sincerely,
Pia Eberhardt
Dear Ms Eberhardt,
Thank you for your email. We apologise for the delay but the assessment of 46 documents has taken us far more time than estimated as it involved numerous consultation with different services. We inform you that we are currently finalising the reply to your request and that it should be submitted to the approval procedure in the coming days
Thank you very much in advance for your patience and understanding.
Yours sincerely,
Access to Documents Team
European Commission
Directorate-General for Trade
[DG TRADE request email]