Dear Ms. Maurice,

Thank you for your e-mail dated 10/10/2023. We hereby acknowledge receipt
of your application for access to documents, which was registered today
under reference number 2023/13/IN.

In accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to
European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, applicable to EDA
in accordance with Article 30 of Council Decision 2015/1835 of 12 October
2015, your application will be handled within 15 working days. The time
limit will expire on 01/11/2023. In case this time limit needs to be
extended, you will be informed in due course.

Yours sincerely,

EDA Access to Documents
      

FOLLOW US ON            [1][EDA request email]
   Rue des Drapiers 17-23, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
  [2]www.eda.europa.eu

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Dear Ms Maurice,

We refer to your e-mail of 10 October 2023 in which you make a request for
access to documents, registered on 11 October 2023 under the reference
number 2023/13/IN.

Your application concerns a very large number of documents/pages, which
need to be assessed individually. Such a detailed analysis cannot be
carried out within the normal time limits set out in Article 7 of
Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. In particular, please note that from a first
estimate, at least 724 meetings, with more than 9000 pages of
documentation, should be assessed to identify any documents falling under
your request. These documents are heterogenous and of different level of
complexity. The main categories identified so far are: invitations,
minutes and operational conclusions concerning those meetings and
workshops. Considering that, on average, it would be needed four minutes
per page to read/assess the concerned documents, reading/assessing those
documents would take at least 75 working days. In addition, a significant
part of those documents is located in an archive and it will be a major
effort to retrieve the complete information, estimated at least in 50
working hours. Furthermore, note that the handling of requests for access
to documents imply to carry out a final assessment of the documents,
redact those parts of the documents to which one or several exceptions
apply, drafting the reply, internal review and approval of the draft
decision and preparing the reply and the documents for dispatch.

Based on Article 6(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, we kindly ask you
to specify the objective of your application and your specific interest in
the documents requested, and whether you could narrow down the scope of
your application  (i.e. the subject matter(s), companies targeted and/or
timeframe covered), so as to reduce it to a more manageable amount 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
requested, not the deadline for replying. This means that the scope of the
request must be reduced in a way that would enable its processing within
the extended deadline of 15 + 15 working days.

In order to enable us to respect the time-limits of Regulation (EC) No
1049/2001, we would ask you for a swift reply to our invitation to propose
a fair solution, within five working days at the latest, by e-mail to
[1][EDA request email]. If you have any questions concerning
the invitation, you can contact us at the same e-mail address.

In the absence of a reply within five working days, 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, counting from the
registration of your application.

Yours sincerely,

From: ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2023 5:58 PM
To: Marie Maurice <[FOI #13673 email]>
Subject: RE: access to documents request - Meetings, correspondances and
contacts between EDA and industry

Dear Ms. Maurice,

Thank you for your e-mail dated 10/10/2023. We hereby acknowledge receipt
of your application for access to documents, which was registered today
under reference number 2023/13/IN.

In accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to
European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, applicable to EDA
in accordance with Article 30 of Council Decision 2015/1835 of 12 October
2015, your application will be handled within 15 working days. The time
limit will expire on 01/11/2023. In case this time limit needs to be
extended, you will be informed in due course.

Yours sincerely,

EDA Access to Documents
      

FOLLOW US ON            [2][EDA request email]
   Rue des Drapiers 17-23, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
  [3]www.eda.europa.eu

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Dear Ms Maurice,

We refer to your request for access to documents registered on 11 October 2023 under the reference number 2023/13/IN.

In our last e-mail dated October 27, we pointed out that your application concerns a very large number of documents/pages and asked you, in application of Article 6(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, "to specify the objective of your application and your specific interest in the documents requested, and whether you could narrow down the scope of your application (i.e. the subject matter(s), companies targeted and/or timeframe covered), so as to reduce it to a more manageable amount of documents".

You replied with the e-mail below by indicating some 'keywords' and adding that "not in relation to any specific keyword, my request covers also any meetings and e-mails between representatives of the companies in the scope of my request with the high-level officials of EDA and/or EDA's expert groups".

Unfortunately, the complementary information you provided does not allow us to reduce the scope of your request to a more manageable number of documents. It should be emphasized that the assessment carried out under Regulation (EC) No. 1049/2001 is not limited to reading the documents, but also includes a page-by-page analysis of their content. In addition, your request concerns documents for which it may be necessary to consult to third parties, in accordance with Article 4.4 of the Regulation. Please note that, on average, a third-party consultation may take 5,5 working days.

We therefore invite you to further specify the purpose of your request. In particular, we suggest narrowing down the number of companies targeted and the timeframe covered. The purpose is to filter and identify the relevant information you are interested in and ensure its assessment in accordance with Article 4 of the Regulation. The length of this process depends on the level of complexity of the documents content-wise.

Please note that in the absence of a response from you enabling us to process your request, we may unilaterally restrict the scope of your request to a number of documents that can be handled within the statutory deadlines.

Your sincerely,
EDA Access to documents team

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Dear Ms. Maurice,

We refer to our last e-mail below, in which we invited you, pursuant to Article 6(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, to further specify the purpose of your request, registered under the reference number 2023/13/IN.

As the first 15 working days from the date of registration of your request expires today, we have to extend the time limit by 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 24 November 2023.

Please note that our last request below to better specify the purpose of your request and your specific interest in the documents requested remains valid, and that in the absence of a response from you allowing us to process your request, we may unilaterally restrict the scope of your request to a number of documents that can be processed within the legal time limits.

Your sincerely,
EDA Access to documents team

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Dear Ms. Maurice,

We refer to your last e-mail below, for which we thank you, regarding your request for access to documents registered under the reference number 2023/13/IN.

In accordance with Article 6(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 and as part of a fair solution, we invite you to select 4 of the companies mentioned in your last e-mail. We will then assess the corresponding meetings between EDA representatives and representatives of the 4 selected companies over the past year. We believe that this will enable us to safeguard the interests of good administration and satisfy your request within the deadline.

Given the time constraints, we would be very grateful if you could reply within 24 hours from receipt of this e-mail. In the absence of a response from you, we will unilaterally limit the scope of your request to meetings over the past year between EDA representatives and representatives of the first 4 companies indicated in your email of 3 November (Thales, Airbus, Telespazio and Safran).

Yours sincerely,
EDA Access to Documents Team

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Dear Ms Maurice,

We refer to your e-mail of 10 October 2023 in which you made a request for
access to documents, registered on 11 October 2023 under the reference
number 2023/13/IN. Your request concerns:

‘- All documents - including but not limited- to agendas, correspondence,
minutes, (hand-written) notes, audio recordings, verbatim reports,
operational conclusions, lines to take, e-mails, memos and presentations -
related to the meetings between EDA and the following companies'
representatives and/or intermediaries for these companies:

- Thales and subsidiaries

- Airbus and subsidiaries

- Atos its subsidiaries

- Sopra Steria, and its subsidiaries

- Telespazio

- Gemalto

- Idemia

- Idemia Identity & Security

- Safran, and its subsidiaries

- Sagem

- Sagem Défense Sécurité

- Edisoft SA

- E-GEOS SPA

- Naval Group

- DCNS

- Morpho

- Collecte Localisation Satellites

Starting 1st of January 2009 to date.’

In accordance with Article 6(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 and as
part of a fair solution, we invited you to narrow down the scope of your
request (i.e. the subject matter(s) and/or timeframe covered), so as to
reduce it to a number of documents that can be handled within the
statutory deadlines. We also indicated that, according to our first
estimates, your application would involve a very large number of
documents/pages, which would have to be assessed individually and would
require at least 75 days' work, to which must be added the fact that a
significant proportion of these documents are held in archives.

Following several exchanges, you were invited, in our last e-mail of 7
November 2023, to select 4 of the companies mentioned in your e-mail dated
3 November 2023. In the same e-mail, we also indicated that “in the
absence of a response from you, we will unilaterally limit the scope of
your request to meetings over the past year between EDA representatives
and representatives of the first 4 companies indicated in your email of 3
November (Thales, Airbus, Telespazio and Safran)”.

With a view to safeguarding the interests of good administration, we have
seen ourselves obliged to balance your possible interest in access against
the workload resulting from the processing of your application. We have
therefore, as announced in our last e-mail of 7/11/2023, and considering
the selection criteria and the specific interest that you have indicated,
unilaterally restricted the scope of your request to a number of documents
that can be processed within 30 working days from the date of registration
of your request.

Consequently, your application is understood to cover meetings, over the
past year, between EDA representatives and representatives of 4 companies
(Thales, Airbus, Telespazio and Safran). Moreover, on the basis of the
information you have provided, we have looked at documents relating to
meetings between high-level EDA officials and representatives of the 4
companies involved in the following programmes: FP7; H2020; Horizon
Europe; EUROSUR; Interoperability; GMES; Copernicus; ESRIF; Sag; European
Defence Fund; Border Management; Biometrics; RPAS; HAPS; Stratobus.

We have conducted an internal search of the documents falling within the
reduced scope of your request and we found:

• correspondence and other documents mainly related to contracts signed
between EDA representatives and representatives of the 4 companies
above mentioned, and;
• briefing notes and flash reports concerning meetings between EDA
representatives and representatives of the 4 companies above
mentioned.

We regret to inform you that the documents related to those contracts and
events cannot be released since they are protected by the following
exceptions set out in Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001:

1. Article 4(1)(a) second indent - defence and military matters.

The documents contain information regarding several ongoing Member States‘
projects relating to defence and military matters.  

2. Article 4(2) first indent - commercial interests of a natural or legal
person, including intellectual property.

The documents contain information of commercial nature the disclosure of
which could undermine and impact negatively the business activities and
commercial interests of Member States and other stakeholders. Putting such
information in the public domain would affect their competitive position
on the market. The exceptions laid down in Article 4(2) Regulation
1049/2001 apply unless there is an overriding public interest in
disclosure of the document/documents.

Pursuant to Article 4(2) of Regulation 1049/2001, we have also examined to
which extent the exception laid down in Article 4(2) of Regulation
1049/2001 may be waived in case of an overriding public interest in
disclosure. Such an interest must firstly be a public interest and
secondly outweigh the harm caused by the disclosure. Having analysed your
request, we have not found any elements which could justify the existence
of an overriding public interest in the sense of the Regulation, which
would outweigh the exceptions stipulated in Article 4(2) mentioned above.
As a result, access to these documents on the basis of overriding public
interest cannot be justified.

3. Article 4(1)(b) privacy and the integrity of the individual, in
particular in accordance with Union legislation regarding the protection
of personal data.

Article 9(1)(b) of Regulation 2018/1725 does not allow the transmission of
these personal data, except if you prove that it is necessary to have the
data transmitted to you for a specific purpose in the public interest and
where there is no reason to assume that the legitimate interests of the
data subject might be prejudiced. In your request, you do not put forward
any arguments to establish the necessity to have the data transmitted for
a specific purpose in the public interest. Consequently, we have concluded
that, pursuant to Article 4(1)(b) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, access
cannot be granted to the personal data contained in the requested
documents, as the need to obtain access thereto for a purpose in the
public interest has not been substantiated and there is no reason to think
that the legitimate interests of the individuals concerned would not be
prejudiced by disclosure of the personal data concerned.

Means of redress

In accordance with Article 7(2) of Regulation 1049/2001, you are entitled
to make a confirmatory application requesting EDA to review its position.

Such a confirmatory application should be addressed within 15 working days
upon receipt of this email to the Chief Executive of EDA to the following
email address: [1][EDA request email] .

Yours sincerely,

EDA Access to Documents
[2]signature_572346763
[3]A picture containing drawing Description  
automatically generated    
[8]signature_962340998  
FOLLOW US ON  [4]signature_1410448363  [9][EDA request email]
[5]signature_1761553044  [10]signature_1728784819   Rue des
[6]signature_1554460717  [7]signature_1422700287 Drapiers 17-23, 1050 Brussels,
Belgium
[11]signature_1141883288 
[12]www.eda.europa.eu

[13]signature_572346763

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