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.