Ref. Ares(2020)5120654 - 30/09/2020
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
Secretariat-General
Directorate C – Transparency, Efficiency & Resources
The Director
Brussels
SG.C.1/TB/rc -
By registered mail with AR
Mr Alexander Fanta
netzpolitik.org
Rue de la Loi 155
1040 Bruxelles
Copy by email:
ask+request-8503-
xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject:
Your application for access to documents – GESTDEM 2020/5488
Dear Mr Fanta,
I refer to your e-mail/letter of 15 September 2020, registered on 17 September 2020, in
which you make a request for access to documents, under the above-mentioned reference
number.
1.
SCOPE OF YOUR REQUEST
You request access to, I quote:
‘[a]ccording to Report from the Commission on the Implementation of Regulation
1049/2001 published on September 15, 2020 for the year 2019, last year at total of
18,337 documents were entered into the document register, including 14,796 documents
entered by the European Commission. I would like to request the number of documents
held that are SMS or exchanges from messaging services such as WhatsApp, Signal,
Telegram, Wire, Threema, iMessage, etc. Please provide a list of such registered
documents including entry into the register and the DG that entered it’.
2.
ASSESSMENT AND CONCLUSIONS UNDER REGULATION (EC) NO 1049/2001
We regret to inform you that the Commission does not hold any documents that would
correspond to the description given in your application.
Commission européenne/Europese Commissie, 1049 Bruxelles/Brussel, BELGIQUE/BELGIË - Tel. +32 22991111
As specified in Article 2(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, the right of access as
defined in that regulation applies only to existing documents in the possession of the
institution.
Article 2(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 provides, in particular, that ‘[t]his
Regulation shall apply to all documents held by an institution, that is to say, documents
drawn up or received by it and in its possession, in all areas of activity of the European
Union’.
Indeed, the register of Commission documents1 contains various types of documents
marked by specific abbreviations:
C:
Documents relating to official instruments for which the
Commission has sole responsibility. Some are transmitted to the Council
or Parliament for information;
COM: Proposed legislation and other Commission communications to the
Council and/or the other institutions, and their preparatory papers.
Commission documents for the other institutions (legislative proposals,
communications, reports, etc.);
JOIN: Commission and High Representative Joint Acts;
OJ:
Agendas of Commission meetings;
P:
Decision by the President of the Commission;
PV:
Minutes of Commission meetings;
SEC: Documents which cannot be classified in any of the other series,
for example, day notes of written procedures, impact assessment
summaries, impact assessments, Commission Decisions, etc.; and
SWD: Commission staff working documents.
To each of the above document types belongs a specific template including the editing
and formatting rules that the author of the given document must follow in order to ensure
that the document is formally acceptable for adoption. These rules can be followed only
if the author applies the custom settings of the word processor software used by the
Commission. Other formats, such as those of SMS or the interfaces used by various
messaging services, are not acceptable for registration.
1
https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/index.cfm?fuseaction=search
2
Even in the very unlikely case that an SMS or a messaging service content appeared, in
converted form, in one of the documents listed in the document register, the database is
not equipped with standard searching tools that would enable the Commission to filter
such converted documents. Thus, in order to launch the search necessary to identify
documents potentially falling within the scope of your request, the software that handles
the document register should be reprogrammed.
As the Court confirmed, ‘ […] all information which can be extracted from an electronic
database by general use through pre-programmed search tools, even if that information
has not previously been displayed in that form or ever been the subject matter of a search
by the staff of the institutions, must be regarded as an existing document’; however, ‘the
operations which the programming of new SQL queries would involve were not
comparable to a normal or routine search in the database concerned, carried out using the
search tools available to the Commission in respect of that database and that, therefore,
the information requested would have required the creation of a new document.’2
Given that no such documents, corresponding to the description given in your
application, are held by the Commission, the Commission is not in a position to fulfil
your request.
3.
MEANS OF REDRESS
In accordance with Article 7(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, you are entitled to
make a confirmatory application requesting the Commission to review this position.
Such a confirmatory application should be addressed within 15 working days upon
receipt of this letter to the Secretariat-General of the Commission at the following
address:
European Commission
Secretariat-General
Unit C.1. ‘Transparency, Document Management and Access to Documents’
BERL 7/076
B-1049 Brussels,
or by emai
l to: xxxxxxxxxx@xx.xxxxxx.xx.
Yours faithfully,
Tatjana Verrier
Director
2 Judgment of the Court of 11 January 2017,
Typke v
Commission, C-491/15 P, EU:C:2017:5,
paragraphs 36 and 47.
3
Electronically signed on 30/09/2020 09:38 (UTC+02) in accordance with article 11 of Commission Decision C(2020) 4482
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