Licensing agreements with Microsoft concerning Microsoft Windows
Mathias Schindler made this access to documents request to Informatics
This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.
Dear Informatics,
Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting documents which contain the following information:
the licensing agreements with Microsoft concerning the use of the Microsoft Windows operating system. This should include invoices, procurement documents, memos on bulk licensing and all information concerning extended warranty and support for Microsoft Windows.
I would like to restrict the scope of this request only to those licenses which are still currently in use.
Yours faithfully,
Mathias Schindler
Dear Mr. Schindler,
Thank you for your request for access to documents.
Unfortunately, you have not indicated your postal address. This is necessary for registering and handling your request in line with the procedural requirements.
Please send us your full postal address at your earliest convenience. Pending your reply, we reserve the right to refuse the registration of your request.
Alternatively, you may use directly the electronic form available on the Europa website:
http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/....
Best regards,
DIGIT ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
European Commission
Directorate-General for Informatics
Rue Montoyer 15 - 07/P001
1049 Brussels/Belgium
Dear Informatics,
thank you for your fast reply. There is no legal requirement for the Commission to ask for a postal address.
I refer you to the Ombudsman Decision in case 682/2014/JF:
"The Commission’s requirement that all persons who ask for public access to documents must provide their postal address for its paper post sending arrangements, is maladministration."
To make matters worse: The European Commission already has my address and to make matters even worse, the European Commission has apparently stopped sending out written printouts of the replies to FOIA requests during the pandemic, rendering the request for a postal address pointless on a whole new level.
In short: Just register the request, send me the GESTEM-number and stop wasting your and my time with that postal requirement hallucination.
Yours faithfully,
Mathias Schindler
Dear Mr. Schindler,
Thank you for your reply and for informing us that you have already made other access to documents requests to the European Commission.
Based on the information retrieved in GESTDEM, we would like to inform you that we have registered in our system more than one postal address corresponding to your name. The latest postal address registered under your name is the following:
Name: SCHINDLER Mathias
Address: Bundestagsbüro Julia Reda, MdEP Unter den Linden 50 11011 Berlin, Germany
Could you please confirm that the above address is still correct?
Once we receive your confirmation, we will register your request and provide you with the GESTDEM reference number.
Kind regards,
DIGIT ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
European Commission
Directorate-General for Informatics
Rue Montoyer 15 - 07/P001
1049 Brussels/Belgium
Dear Informatics,
You can use this address or any other. Please confirm that the request for access has been registered and that your demand for a postal address was sent in error and in violation of Regulation 1049/2001.
Yours faithfully,
Mathias Schindler
Dear Mr Schindler ,
Thank you for your e-mail of 2 June 2020. We hereby acknowledge receipt of
your application for access to documents, which was registered on 3 June
2020 under reference number GESTDEM 2020/3360.
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 24
June 2020. 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
[1]Privacy statement – access to documents.
Yours faithfully,
DIGIT ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
[2]picture
European Commission
Directorate-General for Informatics
Rue Montoyer 15 - 07/P001
1049 Brussels/Belgium
References
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1. https://ec.europa.eu/info/principles-and...
Dear Informatics,
thank you for your email with the registration and the GESTEM number.
I object to the registration date June 6, 2020. My access to documents request was submitted to you on June 2, 2020. Your reply on June 2, 2020 sufficiently proves that you had all the required information necessary to register the request on the same day.
Article 7 (1) sentence 1 of Regulation 1049/2001 requires you to register the request promptly. By deploying a stalling tactic demanding a postal address devoid of any purpose, you failed to comply with the Regulation 1049/2001.
In the interest of not creating further problems, I suggest to properly change the registration date to June 2, 2020.
Please do not forget to confirm that your request for a postal address was sent in error and without a legal basis as demanded in my previous email.
Yours faithfully,
Mathias Schindler
Dear Informatics,
The first sentence should read June 3 instead of June 6. Otherwise, my objection stands.
Yours faithfully,
Mathias Schindler
Dear Mr. Schindler,
Your request for access to documents has been handled promptly and in compliance with the Regulation 1049/2001.
Asking applicants to provide a name and a valid postal address is a legal prerequisite for the Commission to formally notifying its access-to-documents decisions, as required by the EU Treaties. Such requirement has been formally adopted by the European Institutions, see also the Commission’s reply to the opinion of the Ombudsman to which you refer: https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/pdf/en/8.... Even though the mailing of replies by post may temporarily be suspended due to the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic, the provision of a postal address still constitutes a legal requirement, since standard practice may be resumed at any time. Therefore, without receiving a valid postal address, we are not in a position to register and handle any request.
Your initial request did not include a postal address and any previous access to documents requests have been handled by DGs other than DIGIT and thus, they are not automatically visible to us. As we have also already explained to you, we have received more than one postal addresses under your name and therefore, the confirmation of the one which is still relevant is necessary and took place in due course after receiving your request.
In any case and despite the above lack of information, the registration of your request took place promptly and within 24 hours after your initial request, which constitutes standard practice for the European Commission, it is proportional to the resources dedicated to replying to access to documents requests and does not impede your rights to receive access to the requested documents under Regulation 1049/2001. Therefore, the registration date remains 3 June 2020.
Please rest assured that your application is under consideration and we will handle it in accordance with the requirements of the Regulation 1049/2001.
Kind regards,
DIGIT ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
European Commission
Directorate-General for Informatics
Rue Montoyer 15 - 07/P001
1049 Brussels/Belgium
Dear Informatics,
thank you for your reply, which is lacking consistency. According to the Access to Documents Team of DG Trade, the European Commission is working on a new Access to Documents Platform, to which I quote:
"On the providing your postal address, we would like to inform you that the
Secretariat-General is developing a new tool for access to documents
requests that should be implemented still this year. When this new tool
will be operational, we might not require a postal address from applicants
anymore. "
There mere fact that you think you might be needing a postal address at some point in the future for legal or practical reasons does not prevent you from promptly registering my request in the first place.
Your argument that a one-day delay is the norm for other parts of the Commission administration does not work in your favour, it only proves the systematic level of maladministration among the Commission towards Regulation 1049/2001.
Since FOIA requests with the European Commission can regularly take up to six months or more before even the first physical mail exchange takes place, the requirement of a postal address that may or may not be working in the future is a waste of resources on both sides and lacks any justification.
I maintain my request to have the date of registration properly be reflected by June 2 and not June 3. Please confirm the adjustment.
Yours faithfully,
Mathias Schindler
Dear Mr. Schindler,
We refer to your e-mail of 02 June 2020 in which you make a request for
access to documents, registered on 03 June 2020 under the above mentioned
reference number.
As detailed below, parts of the description given in your application do
not enable us to identify concrete documents, which would correspond to
your request.
We therefore invite you, in accordance with Article 6(2) of Regulation
(EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to documents, to provide us with
more detailed information on the documents you request. More specifically,
in your request you refer to “memos on bulk licensing”. Please provide us
with more information on the meaning of memos on bulk licensing, such as
references to specific documents or the expected content of such
documents.
In addition, your request contains the element “all information concerning
extended warranty and support for Microsoft Windows”. We understand the
terms “warranty” and “support” in a software-related context to mean
access to updates, patches, bugfixes or other improvements that Microsoft
releases for its products. Should this interpretation not be correct,
please provide us with additional clarification.
If you need assistance in clarifying or specifying your application,
please don’t hesitate to contact us at the following email address:
By email to: [1][email address]
In accordance with the third paragraph of Article 2 of the Detailed rules
for the application of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, the deadline of 15
working days for handling your application will start running when we
receive the requested clarifications.
Thank you in advance for your understanding.
Yours faithfully,
DIGIT ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
[2]picture
European Commission
Directorate-General for Informatics
Rue Montoyer 15 - 07/P001
1049 Brussels/Belgium
References
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1. mailto:[email address]
Dear Informatics,
Thank you for your email. I am happy to assist you in providing more information.
"memos on bulk licensing" sounds like a parsing error for human languages. The sentence was meant to be understood as a request for
a) invoices
b) procurement documents
c) memos
regarding the topics
A) on bulk licensing
B) on all information concerning extended warranty and support for Microsoft Windows.
The term "bulk licensing" refers to any kind of licensing beyond a mere single license for an indivisual machine. The term used by Microsoft itself is "Volume Licensing". There are plenty of licensing options offered by Microsoft which are explained in https://download.microsoft.com/download/...
Your interpretation regarding "extended warranty and support" is correct. Microsoft might have many other names for it, _one of which_ could be the "Extended Security Update" programme.
Such extended warranty and support is relevant among other topics when it comes to the lack of proper support for existing Windows 7 computers after January 14, 2020. Other dates might apply for other software.
Yours faithfully,
Mathias Schindler
Dear Mr. Schindler,
Please find attached the reply to your request for access to documents
related to the above-mentioned subject.
Can you please acknowledge the receipt of this email?
Thank you in advance.
Yours faithfully,
DIGIT ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
[1]picture
European Commission
Directorate-General for Informatics
Rue Montoyer 15 - 07/P001
1049 Brussels/Belgium
References
Visible links