Access to documents requests in 2011 and 2012
Dear Sir/Madam,
In line with the right of access to EU documents, and further to Art. 45 of the Europol Decision and the Europol Management Board Decision laying down the rules concerning access to Europol documents, we (Transparency International EU Office & Access Info Europe) are hereby writing to request access to all documents/records providing a detailed list of all the access to documents requests received by Europol in the calendar years 2011 and 2012, which should indicate in particular:
a) The subject of the request made (i.e. the specific document(s)/record(s) requested);
b) The (type of) requestor;
c) How the request was submitted/received (online form, direct email, via www.AsktheEU.org, phone, mail or other);
d) The initial decision on the request, including the basis upon which any refusals to grant access were made (prior to any confirmatory applications);
e) Whether the institution consulted with third parties (including other institutions and outside parties) prior to responding to the request;
f) Whether or not the initial refusal or partial refusal resulted in a confirmatory application;
g) Whether the confirmatory application was successful or partially successful (ie. it resulted in a partial revision of the initial response), or whether the confirmatory application resulted in a confirmation of the initial denial;
h) Whether or not partial access was granted to the documents;
i) Whether or not access to the entirety of the document requested was denied;
j) The time taken to deal with each request (i.e. including confirmatory applications, where applicable);
k) The number of times the deadline was extended, the amount of time it was extended for, and the reasons for the extension;
l) Whether the requester was asked to clarify or narrow their request, or to provide more information about themselves or about the reasons for their request.
Should an overview record listing the above-mentioned information for each individual request not be held by your institution, we would like to request the individual files related to all access to documents requests received in the calendar years 2011 and 2012 (i.e. the administrative correspondence providing insights to (a)-(l) above).
May we kindly request that the documents be provided in electronic format; where database records are provided, please provide these in an open, accessible format.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Yours sincerely,
Access Info Europe and Transparency International EU Office
Dear Sir/Madam,
Thank you for your submission, which is currently being reviewed. We will inform you of the outcome as soon as it is available.
Thank you for your interest in Europol.
G24 - EU & International Law Department
Dear Sir/Madam,
In your request for public access to Europol documents dated 11/07/2013
you have asked for:
' access to all
documents/records providing a detailed list of all the access to
documents requests received by Europol in the calendar years 2011
and 2012, which should indicate in particular:
a) The subject of the request made (i.e. the specific
document(s)/record(s) requested);
b) The (type of) requestor;
c) How the request was submitted/received (online form, direct
email, via [1]www.AsktheEU.org, phone, mail or other);
d) The initial decision on the request, including the basis upon
which any refusals to grant access were made (prior to any
confirmatory applications);
e) Whether the institution consulted with third parties (including
other institutions and outside parties) prior to responding to the
request;
f) Whether or not the initial refusal or partial refusal resulted
in a confirmatory application;
g) Whether the confirmatory application was successful or partially
successful (ie. it resulted in a partial revision of the initial
response), or whether the confirmatory application resulted in a
confirmation of the initial denial;
h) Whether or not partial access was granted to the documents;
i) Whether or not access to the entirety of the document requested
was denied;
j) The time taken to deal with each request (i.e. including
confirmatory applications, where applicable);
k) The number of times the deadline was extended, the amount of
time it was extended for, and the reasons for the extension;
l) Whether the requester was asked to clarify or narrow their
request, or to provide more information about themselves or about
the reasons for their request.'
In reference to your request Europol has searched and identified
information possibly falling within the scope of your request.
Please find attached the following document which should allow you to
compile answers to your questions:
PA Overview Table – made partially accessible 19.08.2013.pdf
This document provides overview of the information (as outlined in (a) to
(l)) requested for each individual request with the exception of (c). As
regards how each request was submitted/received (online form, direct
email, via [2]www.AsktheEU.org, phone, mail or other), all requests so far
have come through email, primarily through the website of Europol via the
provided form, and are automatically disseminated to the corresponding
inbox. Requests submitted directly via [3]www.AsktheEU.org address them
to the above mentioned internal mailboxes. Even though we do not keep
statistics on the origin of requests made (as so far all have been
received electronically) [4]www.AskTheEU.org website contains the number
of information requests submitted to Europol through the website.
Please note that you may make a confirmatory application, in line with
Article 7 (3) of the Management Board Decision laying down the rules
concerning access to Europol documents, asking Europol to reconsider its
position within 30 working days of receiving Europol’s reply.
Thank you for showing interest in our organisation.
Yours sincerely,
G24 – EU & International Law
Dear G24 EU & International Law,
Thank you for your response to our request and the document provided.
Having consulted the document, we would kindly like to request verification from you that all entries in the table are fully visible. (See, for example, the fourth row (Date of receipt: 27/11/2012), where there appears to be some text in the 'Result' column not visible due to the cell size.)
Should you prefer to clarify this by telephone, please feel free to provide us with a contact name and details.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Perera,
on behalf of Access Info Europe and the Transparency International EU Office
Dear Mr Perera,
Further to our conversation of last week, please find attached the reprinted version, containing the reformatted cells in the Excel Print out.
Kind regards,
G24