CETA and TTIP: EC-Poland corespondence - specific documents

La demande a été rejetée par Commerce.

Dear Trade (TRADE),

under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting an access to documents which contain correspondence (including e-mails) between the European Commission and the Polish Government on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), specifically [postal address] Notes to Trade Policy Committee:

a) regarding to TTIP agreement documents dated: 1/10/2013 (only one that is described as "Limited" in the list), 27/11/2013, 30/01/2014,

b) regarding to CETA agreement documents dated: 1/09/2009, 17/02/2010, 2/12/2010, 18/01/2012, 16/05/2012, 13/09/2012, 8/11/2012, 5/06/2013.

Since above-mentioned documents are NOT specified as Restricted or Limited (with one exception – see above) on two lists delivered by DG TRADE in response to my previous request (see: http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/ceta_...) I expect no further delay in making them public.

If the requested documents were conducted in more than one language​​, please, make available all versions.

Please provide those documents in .odt and .pdf formats.

Yours faithfully,

Maria Swietlik

Dear Ms Swietlik,

Thank you for your request for access to documents. Unfortunately you have not indicated your postal address that is required for registering and handling your request in line with the procedural requirements. Please send us your full postal address at your earliest convenience. Pending your reply, we reserve the right to refuse the registration of your request.

You may, of course, use directly the electronic form for entering your request:
http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/...

DG Trade

Afficher les sections citées

Dear Trade (TRADE),

this is postal address that would be proper for handling the correspondence:

[postal address]

[postal address]

[postal address]

Yours faithfully,

Maria Swietlik

Dear Ms Swietlik,

I hereby acknowledge the receipt of your email of 11/10/2014 registered on 17/10/2014 under the reference number GESTDEM 2014/4883.

In accordance with Regulation 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, you will receive a response to your request within 15 working days: 07/11/2014. If this deadline needs to be extended, you will be informed in due course.

You have lodged your application via the AsktheEU.org website. Please note that this is a private website which has no link with any institution of the European Union. Therefore the European Commission cannot be held accountable for any technical issues or problems linked to the use of this system.

Best regards,
DG Trade

Afficher les sections citées

Dear Ms Swietlik,

We refer to your request registered on 21/10/2014 in which you make a request for access to documents, registered under the reference number GESTDEM 2014/4883.

Your application is currently being handled. However, we are not in a position to complete the handling of your application within the time limit of 15 working days, which expired on 07/11/2014.

Your application concerns, sensitive documents that require individual assessment.

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 28/11/2014.

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

Yours faithfully,
DG Trade

Afficher les sections citées

2 Attachments

Dear Ms Swietlik,

 

Thank you for your access to documents request registered as GestDem
2014/4883, requesting access to documents under Regulation No 1049/2001
regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission
documents.

 

Please find attached DG Trade's reply.

 

You may want to visit the pages on trade relations with the US of the
Directorate General for Trade in Europa, the European Commission's
website, at:

[1]http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countri...

[2]http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focu...

 

We would greatly appreciate if you could acknowledge receipt of this
email.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

Víctor García

 

Víctor García López-Berges

[3]Description: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/images/ec_logo...

European Commission

DG TRADE E1 – USA and Canada
CHAR 6/220
B-1040 Brussels-Belgium
Rue de la Loi 170
1040 Bruxelles/Brussel
+32 2 29 80202
[4][email address]

 

 

 

Afficher les sections citées

Dear Trade (TRADE),

I confirm receiving both email and a letter with Your answer.

Yours faithfully,

Maria Swietlik

Dear Trade (TRADE),

I'd like to ask you for .odt version of your answer, it will be very helpfull.

Yours faithfully,

Maria Swietlik

Thank you for your message. I will be back on Thursday 8 January.

Dear Ms Swietlik,

I have sent in the past several replies to asktheeu.org using the same format (Outlook message and attachments in PDF format) as in my reply to your request and never got a problem with the readability of the answers.

Can you please clarify what the issue is with the format/readability of my reply?

Kind regards

Victor Garcia

Afficher les sections citées

Dear Trade (TRADE),

can you, please, clarify on what base you refuse my request? I specifically requested in my first letter of such a format. I asked for such editable (not only readable) formats before and never have a problem with DG Trade (you can check it in my prev. correspondence) or other institution.

Yours faithfully,

Maria Swietlik

1 Attachment

  • Attachment

    141120 Draft Reply SWIETLIK Gestdem 2014 4883 open format.odt

    38K Download

Dear Ms Swietlik,

We would like to make clear that we did not refuse to convert the reply letter to an open office format. However, we did not understand why you have requested this, as up to now you have only asked to convert annexes (that had an excel format). The reply letter has a PDF format that can be opened by Adobe Reader (at no cost).

I would invite you to use Adobe Reader, so that you can open the files sent to you from the Commission, as the Commission does not have a tool for converting PDF to open office format, thus this makes it difficult for us to handle.

Nevertheless after a day of work our IT colleagues managed to find a solution and I attach you here a copy of the reply in the open office format.
Hope we can cooperate on this in the future.

I wish you a great day!

Best,
Indre

Access to Documents
European Commission
DG TRADE
Unit A3 - Information, communication and civil society
+32 2 295 61 07

Afficher les sections citées

Dear Trade (TRADE),

GestDem 2014/4883

Please note this is my confirmatory application.

Under Art. 7 (2), 8 of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, I'm requesting you to reconsider your position and to grant me access to below-mentioned documents.
On 11th October 2014 r. I request an access to “documents which contain correspondence (including e-mails) between the European Commission and the Polish Government on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), specifically [postal address] Notes to Trade Policy Committee:
a) regarding to TTIP agreement documents dated: 1/10/2013 (only one that is described as "Limited" in the list), 27/11/2013, 30/01/2014,
b) regarding to CETA agreement documents dated: 1/09/2009, 17/02/2010, 2/12/2010, 18/01/2012, 16/05/2012, 13/09/2012, 8/11/2012, 5/06/2013.

On 27th December 2014 I have received the refusal of fulfilling my request (dated from 15th December 2014) based on the exception defined in Article 4(1)(a), third indent of regulation. After consideration of your arguments, I still cannot agree that the above mentioned clause justifies the refusal of access to requested documents and specifically it does not (in the circumstances of the case) justifies the denial of access to at least parts of the documents. Considering the latter, the content of the documents should consist the names and positions of the representatives of the Polish government including their signatures. I am also convinced that there are other parts of documents which dissemination would not harm the interest described by art. 4(1)(a), third indent of the Regulation. The grounds for the refusal of access to at least parts of those documents were – in my opinion – where hypothetical and where not considered in details.
As for the refusal of access to the content of the documents as such, I have to underline that Regulation give the fullest possible effect to the right of public access to documents of the institutions (Sweden and MyTravel Group plc v Commission, C-506/08, para. 73; Sweden and Turco v Council, C-39/05 and C-52/05, para. 33; Commission v Technische Glaswerke Ilmenau, Case C-139/07, para. 51; Sweden and Others v API and Commission, C-514/07, para. 69). With regard to this principle of widest possible public access to documents, any exceptions have to be interpreted narrowly (Sweden and MyTravel Group plc v Commission, para. 73; Sison v Council, C-266/05, para. 63; Sweden and Turco v Council, para. 36; Sweden and Others v API and Commission, para. 73).
The refusal does not cover information whether the decision process concerning the documents I have requested was concluded. Therefore the argument that the dissemination of the requested information can harm the international relation can be irrelevant. In Sweden and Turco v. Council Case the ECJ stated that “if the Council decides to refuse access to a document which it has been asked to disclose, it must explain, first, how access to that document could specifically and effectively undermine the interest protected by an exception laid down in Article 4 of Regulation No 1049/2001 relied on by that institution and, secondly, in the situations referred to in Article 4(2) and (3) of that regulation, whether or not there is an overriding public interest that might nevertheless justify disclosure of the document concerned.” The statement of the ECJ can be also implied in term of considering the lack of justified grounds for refusal of the partially access.
As we can witnessed the large debate on the process concerning TTIP and CETA there is a visible and significant public interest in allowing the access to requested documents.
Summarizing, the grounds for the Council decision was not sufficiently explained and were not reflecting the factual state of the case. Therefore my confirmatory application should be taken into account.

Yours faithfully,

Maria Swietlik