Esta es la versión HTML de un fichero adjunto a una solicitud de acceso a la información 'Memos, guidance and guidelines on record creation'.



 
Ref. Ares(2016)5416325 - 16/09/2016
TRANSPARENCY 
Access to documents 
European Commission– SG B4 
 
Newsletter n° 20 
23 April 2015 
 
 Access to documents held by Delegations :
Joint Conclusions of the working-level meeting 
between Commission services and EEAS 
 
 
The SG organised an exchange of views with the colleagues of the EEAS and the 
Commission services dealing with external relations to discuss the approach to be taken on 
the access-to-documents (ATD) requests received in EU Delegations and, in general, on the 
treatment of such requests sent to the Commission and/or to the EEAS, including Delegations. 
The Commission services agreed that the treatment of requests received in Delegations 
concerning documents drafted by Commission "held by" the Delegations and pertaining to 
the area of competences of the Commission
 in Delegations is defined through a working 
practice, and not through a formalised arrangement or a service-level agreement, hence the 
need to draft the present conclusions.  
The EEAS considers that all requests received by both the Commission headquarters (HQ) 
and EU Delegations (which are under the administrative responsibility of the EEAS), and 
relating to documents held by the EEAS, again both in HQ and EU Delegations, are to be 
treated according to the instructions addressed to the EU Delegations and set out in the EU 
Delegations' Guide which implements Regulation 1049/2001. 
All participants pointed to the need to ensure a consistent working practice with the EEAS as 
regards the treatment of requests for access to documents in Delegations.  
1.  The most recurrent scenario clarified with the EEAS was the one where the ATD 
request is received directly by the Delegation (one single request). For this scenario, 
two possibilities were discussed: 
 
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a.  if the request falls under the Commission competence (EU financial 
programmes, etc.), the Head of Delegation explicitly re-directs the request to 
the relevant Commission service and informs the applicant accordingly. The 
acknowledgment of receipt and initial decision should say clearly that it is a 
Commission decision. Under such a scenario, the initial and confirmatory 
replies are both dealt with under the direct responsibility of the Commission, 
unless the applicant disagrees. The Delegation should however duly inform 
EEAS HQ of all requests being redirected in such a way;  
b.  In all other cases, the EEAS should directly assume the responsibility for 
registering and dealing with the request both at initial and confirmatory level.  
2.  In case of a request addressed both to the central services of the EEAS and to the 
Commission, a close consultation between institutions should be put in place in view 
to ensure the consistency between replies. 
[We cannot however prejudge the outcome of the independent assessment by the two 
institutions - according to Regulation 1049/2001 as interpreted by the case law, each 
institution has to take an independent decision.] 
3.  In exceptional cases where a request is received only by the Commission or only by 
the EEAS HQ, which pertains to the area of competence of the other service, the 
Commission/EEAS services could, unless the applicant disagrees, re-direct the request 
to the service that is competent for the subject-matter. 
This Joint Note approved by the SG and the EEAS could serve as the basis of such a working 
arrangement agreement in future.