DG TRADE contacts with Clifford Chance

La solicitud fue parcialmente exitosa.

Dear Trade (TRADE),

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as
developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting all documents,
including notes of minutes, emails and other correspondence,
relating to contacts between staff of DG TRADE and staff of law
firm Clifford Chance, between January 2008 and February 2013.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

Dear Ms Tansey,

Your request for access to documents has been registered. This message is an acknowledgement of receipt.
In accordance with Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, you will receive a reply within 15 working days (27/02/2013).

Yours faithfully,

Raluca MOLDOVAN
Access to Documents

European Commission
DG TRADE
Unit A3 - Information, communication and civil society
CHAR 7/90
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 2 2984 177
[email address]

-----Original Message-----
From: Rachel Tansey [mailto:[FOI #362 email]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 5:31 PM
To: TRADE ACCES DOCUMENTS
Subject: access to information request - DG TRADE contacts with Clifford Chance

Dear Trade (TRADE),

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as
developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting all documents,
including notes of minutes, emails and other correspondence,
relating to contacts between staff of DG TRADE and staff of law
firm Clifford Chance, between January 2008 and February 2013.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

-------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a request for access to information under Article 15 of the
TFEU and, where applicable, Regulation 1049/2001 which has been
sent via the AsktheEU.org website.

Please kindly use this email address for all replies to this
request: [FOI #362 email]

If [DG TRADE request email] is the wrong address for
information requests to Trade (TRADE), please tell the AsktheEU.org
team on email [email address]

This message and all replies from Trade (TRADE) will be published
on the AsktheEU.org website. For more information see our dedicated
page for EU public officials at
http://www.asktheeu.org/en/help/officers



-------------------------------------------------------------------

ocultar partes citadas

Dear Ms Tansey,

We refer to your email of 6 February 2013, in which you submit a request for access to all documents, including notes of minutes, emails and other correspondence, relating to contacts between staff of SG TRADE and staff of law firm Clifford Chance, between January 2008 and February 2013.

This is a very broadly formulated request, which would require extensive searches on different locations. It is not really feasible to retrieve documents on these criteria. In particular, for a significant part of the period covered by your request, there is no central electronic archiving of correspondence. Therefore, searches in paper files would be necessary, which would be very labour-intensive and time consuming.

Furthermore, correspondence with law firms may cover very different subjects and some of it is likely to be confidential in nature.

Consequently, we are unable to handle your request in its present form. We would kindly ask you to make a more targeted request.

Yours sincerely,

Raluca MOLDOVAN
Access to Documents

European Commission
DG TRADE
Unit A3 - Information, communication and civil society
CHAR 7/90
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 2 2984 177
[email address]

-----Original Message-----
From: Rachel Tansey [mailto:[FOI #362 email]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 5:31 PM
To: TRADE ACCES DOCUMENTS
Subject: access to information request - DG TRADE contacts with Clifford Chance

Dear Trade (TRADE),

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as
developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting all documents,
including notes of minutes, emails and other correspondence,
relating to contacts between staff of DG TRADE and staff of law
firm Clifford Chance, between January 2008 and February 2013.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

-------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a request for access to information under Article 15 of the
TFEU and, where applicable, Regulation 1049/2001 which has been
sent via the AsktheEU.org website.

Please kindly use this email address for all replies to this
request: [FOI #362 email]

If [DG TRADE request email] is the wrong address for
information requests to Trade (TRADE), please tell the AsktheEU.org
team on email [email address]

This message and all replies from Trade (TRADE) will be published
on the AsktheEU.org website. For more information see our dedicated
page for EU public officials at
http://www.asktheeu.org/en/help/officers



-------------------------------------------------------------------

ocultar partes citadas

Dear Trade (TRADE),

In accordance with your request for a more targeted access to documents request - due to the labour-intensive and time consuming nature of dealing with my request as previously formulated - I will narrow the time period and scope of my request as follows.

I will reduce the time span of my request to one year, from February 2012 to February 2013. I trust that this will address the issue of having no central electronic archiving of correspondence, for a significant part of the period covered by my original request (Jan 2008-Feb 2013).

Furthermore, since Clifford Chance is a large, multinational law firm, with branches all over the world, I will reduce the scope of my request to cover only correspondence between staff of DG TRADE and three particular branches of Clifford Chance: the Brussels, Paris and London offices of Clifford Chance.

Yours faithfully,

Rachel Tansey

1 Adjuntos

Dear Ms Tansey,

We refer to your e-mail dated 06/02/2013 in which you make a request for
access to documents, registered the same day under the above mentioned
reference number.

Your application is currently being handled. However, we will not be in a
position to complete the handling of your application within the time
limit of 15 working days, which expires on 27/02/2013.

 

An extended time limit is needed as your application concerns documents
held by different Services which must be consulted.

Therefore, we have to extend the time limit with 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 20/03/2013

We apologize for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.

Yours faithfully,

Raluca MOLDOVAN
Access to Documents

[1]Description:
http://ec.europa.eu/trade/images/ec-logo...
European Commission
DG TRADE
Unit A3 - Information, communication and civil society

CHAR 7/90
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 2 2984 177
[2][email address]

 

References

Visible links
2. mailto:[email address]

1 Adjuntos

Dear Ms Tansey,

 

We refer to your e-mail dated 06/02/2013 in which you make a request for
access to documents, registered on the same day under the above mentioned
reference number.

We would like to inform you, that we have identified relevant documents
fall under the scope of your request. The reply letter has been prepared
for you, however we are not be in a position to complete the handling of
your application on 20/03/2013, since the prepared reply letter is waiting
for the signature of the hierarchy.

We would like to ask for your understanding, and we apologize for this
delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.

Yours sincerely,

 

Krisztina HANTOS
Access to Documents

[1]Description:
http://ec.europa.eu/trade/images/ec-logo...
European Commission
DG TRADE
Unit A3 - Information, communication and civil society

CHAR 7/90
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 2 2999366
[2][email address]

 

 

References

Visible links
2. mailto:[email address]

1 Adjuntos

Dear Ms Tansey,

 

We refer to your e-mail dated 06/02/2013 in which you make a request for
access to documents, registered on the same day under the above mentioned
reference number.

As we informed you on 20/03/2013, we have identified relevant documents
fall under the scope of your request. We also mentioned, that the reply
letter has been prepared for you, however we were not in a position to
complete the handling of your application on 20/03/2013, since the
prepared reply letter was waiting for the signature of the hierarchy.

Regrettable the hierarchy was not in the position to sign the prepared
reply letter so far as there were some documents which still had to be
consulted internal and with third parties too.

We would like to ask for your understanding, and we apologize for this
delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.

Yours sincerely,

Krisztina HANTOS
Access to Documents

[1]Description:
http://ec.europa.eu/trade/images/ec-logo...
European Commission
DG TRADE
Unit A3 - Information, communication and civil society

CHAR 7/90
B-1049 Brussels/Belgium
+32 2 2999366
[2][email address]

 

 

References

Visible links
2. mailto:[email address]

Rachel Tansey dejó un comentario ()

I received the following responses by email:

Dear Ms Tansey,

We have tried to contact you on the AskTheEU e-mail address but the email keeps coming back to us. We refer to your le-mail dated 06/02/2013 in which you make a request for access to documents, registered the same day under the above mentioned Gestdem reference number.

Please find below our original reply letter sent on 25/04/2013 to you.

We hope, that this time you will receive our reply and it will meet your needs.

Your sincerely,

Krisztina HANTOS
Access to Documents

This was accompanied by the following formal reply, and 3 pdf documents, which i am unable to upload here:

Brussels 26 March 2013
Ms. Rachel TANSEY
Subject: Access to Documents request: GESTDEM 2013/0580

Dear Ms. TANSEY,
We refer to your access to information request, registered as GESTDEM 2013/0580, requesting access to documents under Regulation No 1049/20011 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents ("the Regulation").

We understand from your request that you would like to have access to:
All correspondence (any documents, including notes of minutes, emails and other correspondence) relating to contacts between staff of DG TRADE and staff of three
particular branches of Clifford Chance: Brussels, Paris and London offices, from February 2012 to February 2013.

We have identified 3 documents as falling, at least partially, within the scope of your request. You will find below a list of these documents as well as the documents themselves enclosed to this letter.
1. Meeting request; from Clifford Chance LLP Brussels - 14 August 2012 (e-mail, letter and attachment)
2. Report of meeting with Clifford Chance - 17 September 2012
3. Report of meeting ECCC on legal and competition issues
Further to the careful examination of each of these documents, I am pleased to inform you that we can grant you full access to documents 2 and 3.

Regarding Document 1, since the documents concerned originate from a third party, the originator of the documents has been consulted. Following an examination of the documents requested under the provisions of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to documents and taking into account the opinion of the third party, full access can be granted to the e-mail and the letter.

However, I regret to inform you that the authors of the documents have objected to the disclosure of the attachment (12-page document) and have motivated their position as follows: the content concerns business secrets of Samsung and disclosure of this document would harm Samsung's commercial interests. On this basis our view is that putting the information contained in this attachment in the public domain would affect Samsung's competitive position on the market. Therefore the exception laid down in Article
4(2) first indent of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 applies to this document.

Disclosure of the attachment would also undermine the protection of the purpose of the Commission's investigation (Article 4(2) lsi indent of the Regulation) and decision­ making process on Case COMP/C-3/39.939 for which the document was filed as this is
still ongoing (Article 4(2) 3rd indent and Article 4(3) of the Regulation). The exceptions laid down in Article 4(2) and 4(3) of Regulation 1049/2001 apply as there is no overriding public interest in disclosure of the document.

Please note that these documents cannot be reproduced or disseminated for commercial purposes without prior consent given by the Commission.

In addition, Document 1 was received by the Commission from Clifford Chance. Therefore, the e-mail and the letter are disclosed for information only and cannot be re­used without the agreement of the originator, who hold a copyright on it. It does not reflect the position of the Commission and cannot be quoted as such.

In accordance with Article 7(2) of Regulation 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 Secretary-General of the Commission at the following address:
European Commission
Secretary-General
Transparency unit SG-B-5
BERL 5/327
B-1049 Bruxelles
or by email to: sg-acc-doc@ec.europa.eu

Yours faithfully.
Jean-Luc DEMARTY