Documents on the right to repair
Alexander Fanta a fait une demande de Accès à l'information à Réseaux de communication, contenu et technologies
This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.
Dear Communications Networks, Content and Technology,
Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting documents which contain the following information:
- Internal documents discussing a possible 'right to repair' of electronic devices dating from since January 1st, 2021
- Documents from stakeholders concerning a possible "right to repair" since the beginning of 2021, including minutes of meetings, e-mails and other documents
Yours faithfully,
Alexander Fanta
netzpolitik.org
Rue de la Loi 155
1040 Bruxelles
Dear Sir,
We hereby acknowledge receipt of your application for access to documents,
which was registered on 01/09/2021 under reference number GESTDEM
2021/5292.
In accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to
European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, your application
will be handled within 15 working days.
The time limit will expire on 22/09/2021. In case this time limit needs to
be extended, you will be informed in due course.
You have lodged your application via a private third-party 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.
Please note that the private third party running the AsktheEU.org website
is responsible and accountable for the processing of your personal data
via that website, and not the Commission.
For further information on your rights, please refer to the third party’s
privacy policy.
We understand that the third party running the AsktheEU.org website
usually publishes the content of applicants’ correspondence with the
Commission on that website. This includes the personal data that you may
have communicated to the Commission (e.g. your private postal address).
Similarly, the third party publishes on that website any reply that the
Commission will send to the email address of the applicants generated by
the AsktheEU.org website.
If you do not wish that your correspondence with the Commission is
published on a private third-party website such as AsktheEU.org, you can
provide us with an alternative, private e-mail address for further
correspondence. In that case, the Commission will send all future
electronic correspondence addressed to you only to that private address,
and it will use only that private address to reply to your request. You
should still remain responsible to inform the private third-party website
about this change of how you wish to communicate with, and receive a reply
from, the Commission.
For information on how we process your personal data visit our page
Privacy statement – access to documents.
Yours faithfully,
Access to documents team (rc)
SG.C.1
Transparency
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Link: [3]themeData
Link: [4]colorSchemeMapping
[5]Holding reply - Your application for access to documents RefGestDem
2021/5292 - Ares(2021)5793226 (Please use this link only if you are an
Ares user – Svp, utilisez ce lien exclusivement si vous êtes un(e)
utilisateur d’Ares)
Dear Mr Fanta,
We refer to your request for access to documents, registered under the
abovementioned 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 today.
An extended time limit is needed as in order to retrieve the documents
requested, large files have to be examined.
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 13 October
2021.
We apologise for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Yours faithfully,
DG CONNECT Access to Documents Team
[6]cid:image001.png@01D3AF19.959C0670
European Commission
DG Connect – ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
BU25 – Avenue de Beaulieu 25
B-1160 Brussels/Belgium
References
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1. file:///tmp/cid:filelist.xml@01D7AFC7.4E6DA440
2. file:///tmp/cid:editdata.mso
3. file:///tmp/~~themedata~~
4. file:///tmp/~~colorschememapping~~
5. https://webgate.ec.testa.eu/Ares/documen...
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Link: [3]themeData
Link: [4]colorSchemeMapping
[5]Your application for access to documents – RefGestDem 2021/5292 -
Ares(2021)5948218 (Please use this link only if you are an Ares user –
Svp, utilisez ce lien exclusivement si vous êtes un(e) utilisateur d’Ares)
Dear Mr Fanta,
We refer to your e-mail of 31 August 2021 wherein you make a request for
access to documents pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the
European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public
access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents
(‘Regulation 1049/2001’), registered on 1 September 2021 under the
above-mentioned reference number.
By your application you are requesting:
΄documents which contain the following information:
- Internal documents discussing a possible 'right to repair' of electronic
devices dating from since January 1st, 2021
- Documents from stakeholders concerning a possible "right to repair"
since the beginning of 2021, including minutes of meetings, e-mails and
other documents’.
Due to the scope of your request, the work needed to deal with your
application entails multiple searches for documents and covers the
following steps:
- Multiple searches for the identification of the documents which may fall
within the scope of the request in several document management systems of
the Commission and various databases,
- Individual analysis of the documents in order to confirm whether they
fall within the scope of the request.
- Retrieval and establishment of a complete list of the documents falling
under the scope of your request,
- Scanning of the documents which are not in pdf format,
- Preliminary individual assessment of the content of the documents in
light of the exceptions contained in Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001,
- For many of the documents, third party consultations under Article 4(4)
and/or 4(5) of Regulation 1049/2001,
- Final assessment of the documents in light of the comments received,
- Redaction of those parts of the documents to which one or several
exceptions apply,
- Preparation and finalisation of the reply for the request,
- Preparation of the reply and the documents for dispatch.
It follows from the above that the work needed for the treatment of your
request cannot expected to be completed within the normal time limits set
out in Article 7 of Regulation 1049/2001.
Article 6(3) of the Regulation 1049/2001 provides that, in the event of an
application relating to a very long or a very large number of documents,
the institution concerned may confer with the applicant informally with a
view to finding a fair solution. In accordance with the case law of the
Union Courts, the proposal for a fair solution aims to balance the
interest of the applicant against the workload resulting from the
processing of the application in order to safeguard the interests of good
administration (Judgments of 6 December 2001, Council v Hautala, Case C
353/99 P, EU:C:2001: 661, para. 30, and of 2 October 2014, Strack v
Commission, Case C 127/13 P, EU:C:2014:2250, para.27). Such solution can
only concern the content or the number of documents applied for, not the
deadline for replying (Judgment of the Court of Justice of 2 October 2014
in case C- 127/13, Guido Strack v Commission, paragraphs 26-28).
This means that the scope of the request must be reduced in a way that
would enable its treatment within the extended deadline of 15 + 15 working
days.
Based on our search and analysis at this stage, there are indications of
more than 100 documents which might contain references to the ‘right to
repair’ of electronic devices and which must be further examined in order
to verify whether they fall within the scope of your request.
Taking this into account and based on the above-mentioned provision, we
would kindly ask you to specify the objective of your request, your
specific interest in the requested documents and whether you could narrow
down the scope of your request, so as to reduce it to a more manageable
amount of documents.
In order to help you narrow down your wide scope request, please note that
at this stage the following categories of documents with indications of
references to the ‘right to repair’ have been identified:
• Meeting notes/minutes, approximate number of documents
identified: (15)
• Documents relating to contacts with external stakeholders,
approximate number of documents identified: (3)
• Documents in the context of US/EU Trade and Technology
Council, approximate number of document: (6)
• Documents relating to the ongoing study on the Right to
Repair, approximate number of documents: (20)
• Documents in the context of the Circular Electronics
Initiative, approximate number of documents: (19)
• Documents in the context of other Commission initiatives
related to the Circular Electronics Initiative, approximate number of
documents: (22)
• Various documents, approximate number:(37)
Taking into account the other ‘access to documents’ requests being handled
within DG CONNECT at the same time, the global workload of the concerned
staff during the same period, the human resources available and the need
to safeguard good administration, we consider that in the remaining
timeframe we would be able to deal with a maximum of 15 documents falling
within the abovementioned categories.
Please also note that as your request regards an area of policy currently
under development, many of the above listed documents will likely be
excluded under the exceptions in Article 4 of Regulation 1049/2001.
In order to enable us to respect the time limits of Regulation 1049/2001,
we would ask you for a swift response to our proposal for a fair solution.
Please respond by Monday 4 October 2021 eob at the latest.
Please send your response by email to the following address:
[6][email address]
In the absence of a reply within the abovementioned deadline, we will
unilaterally restrict the scope of your application to those parts that
can be dealt with within the extended deadline of 30 working days counting
from the date of registration of your application.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
The DG CONNECT Access to Documents Team
[7]cid:image001.png@01D3AF19.959C0670
European Commission
DG Connect – ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
BU25 – Avenue de Beaulieu 25
B-1160 Brussels/Belgium
References
Visible links
1. file:///tmp/cid:filelist.xml@01D7B5E4.688F1F20
2. file:///tmp/cid:editdata.mso
3. file:///tmp/~~themedata~~
4. file:///tmp/~~colorschememapping~~
5. https://webgate.ec.testa.eu/Ares/documen...
6. mailto:[email address]
Dear DG CONNECT Access to Documents Team,
I must confess to be not too happy about your reply. I understand that processing requests for documents is time-consuming and onerous, but at the same time we are not talking about a personal favour here but a legal obligation. You rightly refer to the "fair solution", but to me a limit of 15 documents appears quite arbitrary. Can you tell me how you arrived at that number? I certainly have never heard about such a low limit and would like to point to the fact that I have made many requests to different DGs, often receiving dozens and sometimes even hundreds of documents in response.
I would like to point out that I am making this request in the public interest and in my role as journalist, which the European Court of Human Rights has recognized to have a special "social watchdog" function. I ask you to take this into account when dealing with my request.
That said, I would like to ask you to hand over as many of the 122 documents you have mentioned. My priority are the meeting minutes and notes, but I would appreciate access to the other files as well.
Yours sincerely,
Alexander Fanta
Dear DG CONNECT Access to Documents Team,
could you please make at least the meeting notes/minutes available to me? Preferably in digital format.
Yours sincerely,
Alexander Fanta
[1]RE: Your application for access to documents – RefGestDem 2021/5292 -
Ares(2021)5948218 - Ares(2021)6240987 (Please use this link only if you
are an Ares user – Svp, utilisez ce lien exclusivement si vous êtes un(e)
utilisateur d’Ares)
Dear Mr Fanta,
Thank you for your emails.
We have taken note of your responses of 1 October and 12 October 2021.
Your application is currently being handled. Unfortunately, we are not
able to send the reply to your application within the given time limit,
which expires today.
You will receive the answer to your application as soon as possible.
We apologize for this delay and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Yours faithfully,
DG CONNECT Access to Documents Team
European Commission
DG Connect – ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
BU25 – Avenue de Beaulieu 25
B-1160 Brussels/Belgium
Dear Communications Networks, Content and Technology,
Please pass this on to the person who reviews confirmatory applications.
I am filing the following confirmatory application with regards to my access to documents request 'Documents on the right to repair'.
I have not received any response to my access to documents request, to which, by law, the European Commission should have responded by September, 21, 2021.
Yours faithfully,
Alexander Fanta
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your email dated 18/11/2021 by which you request, pursuant
to Regulation No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament,
Council and Commission documents, a review of the position taken by DG
CNECT in reply to your initial application GESTDEM 2021/5292.
We hereby acknowledge receipt of your confirmatory application for access
to documents which was registered on 19/11/2021 (Ares(2021)7119394).
Your application will be handled within 15 working days (10/12/2021). In
case this time limit needs to be extended, you will be informed in due
course.
Please be informed that the answer to your confirmatory application is a
formal Commission decision that will be notified to you by express
delivery. Thank you for providing your contact phone number, so that the
external delivery service can contact you in case of absence.
Please note that the Commission will not use your phone number for any
other purpose than for informing the delivery service, and that it will
delete it immediately thereafter.
Yours faithfully,
Access to documents team (cr)
SG.C.1
Transparency
Advance copy by e-mail and registered mail with acknowledgement of receipt
Dear Mr Fanta,
Please find attached document Ares(2021)7586704 regarding "Your application for access to documents- Ref GestDem 2021/5292" sent by Mr Roberto Viola, General Director of DG CONNECT on 08/12/2021.
Best regards,
European Commission
DG CONNECT — ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS
Avenue de Beaulieu, 25
B-1160 Brussels/Belgium
Dear Sir,
Please find attached an advance copy of the reply to your confirmatory
request for access to documents registered under reference GESTDEM
2021/5292.
Yours faithfully,
ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS TEAM (GD)
[1]cid:image001.png@01D45409.F767C980
European Commission
Secretariat-General
SG C.1
[2][email address]
References
Visible links
2. mailto:[email address]
Dear Communications Networks, Content and Technology,
as you indicated in your letter dating from December 10, 2021, my previous confirmatory application was closed as I received an initial reply in the mean time. I would now like to again file a confirmatory application with regards to my access to documents request 'Documents on the right to repair'.
Upon my request, I received only one of a total of 15 documents falling into the scope of my request. This once document was heavily redacted. The rationale provided was, apart from the protection of personal data, mainly related to the protection of ongoing decision making. I believe that exception was applied in an overly broad way and would therefore like to appeal.
First, I would like to point out that the General Court of the European Union in the Evropaïki Dynamiki case (T-167/10) and in in Council v Sophie in’t Veld, C-350/12 P has clearly set out that the authority denying access must establish how access to the documents requested would specifically and actually undermine that objective in a way that was reasonably foreseeable and not purely hypothetical. However, the reply I received signed by DG Roberto Viola on December 8, 2021, provides no specific explanation on why, exactly disclosure would harm ongoing decision making.
I would also like to point out the European Ombudsman finding in case 2781/2008/(TS) FOR, that in many cases EU bodies have offered insufficient reasoning for a refusal when it was grounded on the protection of the decision-making process, which in the opinion of the Ombudsman constitutes maladministration. I ask the Commission to review the documents in question to see whether access to the redacted policy-statements may be granted and, if not, spell out how specifically disclosure would be to the detriment of ongoing decision making other than a quite general reference to internal discussion.
In this context, I would like to refer to a ruling by the General Court on April 21, 2021 (case T‑252/19), in which the court points out that if "citizens are to be able to exercise their democratic rights, they must be in a position to follow in detail the decision-making process within the institutions taking part in the legislative procedures and to have access to all relevant information." In that regard, as the Court of Justice has observed before and re-stated in this case, it is transparency "that contributes to conferring greater legitimacy on the institutions in the eyes of European citizens and increasing their confidence in them by allowing divergences between various points of view to be openly debated. It is in fact rather a lack of information and debate that is capable of giving rise to doubts in the minds of citizens, not only as regards the lawfulness of an isolated act, but also as regards the legitimacy of the decision-making process as a whole."
Yours faithfully,
Alexander Fanta
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your email dated 14/12/2021 by which you request, pursuant
to Regulation No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament,
Council and Commission documents, a review of the position taken by DG
CNECT in reply to your initial application GESTDEM 2021/5292.
We hereby acknowledge receipt of your confirmatory application for access
to documents which was registered on 14/12/2021 (Ares(2021)7119394).
Your application will be handled within 15 working days (13/01/2022). In
case this time limit needs to be extended, you will be informed in due
course.
Please be informed that the answer to your confirmatory application is a
formal Commission decision that will be notified to you by express
delivery. Thank you for providing your contact phone number, so that the
external delivery service can contact you in case of absence.
Please note that the Commission will not use your phone number for any
other purpose than for informing the delivery service, and that it will
delete it immediately thereafter.
Yours faithfully,
Access to documents team (cr)
SG.C.1
Transparency
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Link: [3]themeData
Link: [4]colorSchemeMapping
[5]Your confirmatory application for access to documents under Regulation
(EC) No 1049/2001 - GESTDEM 2021/5292 - 1st holding letter -
Ares(2022)242316 (Please use this link only if you are an Ares user –
Svp, utilisez ce lien exclusivement si vous êtes un(e) utilisateur d’Ares)
Dear Mr Fanta,
I refer to your email of 14 December 2021, registered on the same day, by
which you submit a confirmatory application in accordance with Article
8(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European
Parliament, Council and Commission documents ("Regulation (EC) No
1049/2001"), registered under reference numbers GESTDEM 2021/5292.
I would like to inform you that your confirmatory application is currently
being handled. Unfortunately, we were not able to gather all the elements
allowing us an assessment of your confirmatory request within the
prescribed time limit expiring on 13 January 2022.
Consequently, we have to extend this period by another 15 working days in
accordance with Article 8(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001. The new
deadline expires on 3 February 2022.
Yours faithfully,
María OLIVÁN AVILÉS
Head of Unit
[6]cid:image001.gif@01D13362.41D673C0
European Commission
Secretariat General
SG.C.1 (Transparency, Document Management and Access to Documents)
References
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1. file:///tmp/cid:filelist.xml@01D80871.11EBEAB0
2. file:///tmp/cid:editdata.mso
3. file:///tmp/~~themedata~~
4. file:///tmp/~~colorschememapping~~
5. https://webgate.ec.testa.eu/Ares/documen...
Link: [1]File-List
Link: [2]Edit-Time-Data
Link: [3]themeData
Link: [4]colorSchemeMapping
[5]Your confirmatory application for access to documents under Regulation
(EC) No 1049/2001 - GESTDEM 2021/5292 - 2nd holding letter -
Ares(2022)825747 (Please use this link only if you are an Ares user –
Svp, utilisez ce lien exclusivement si vous êtes un(e) utilisateur d’Ares)
Dear Mr Fanta,
I refer to your email of 14 December 2021, registered on the same day, by
which you submit a confirmatory application in accordance with Article
8(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European
Parliament, Council and Commission documents ("Regulation (EC) No
1049/2001"), registered under reference number GESTDEM 2021/5292.
I also refer to our holding reply of 13 January 2022, by which the time
limit for replying to your confirmatory application was extended by 15
working days, pursuant to Article 8(2) of Regulation 1049/2001. I regret
to have to inform you that we will not be able to respond within the
extended time limit, expiring on 3/02/2022, as we have not yet finalised
the necessary consultations. However, I can assure you that we are doing
our utmost to conclude these proceedings in order to provide you with a
final reply as soon as possible.
I regret this additional delay and sincerely apologise for any
inconvenience this may cause.
Yours sincerely,
Mariusz Daca, Ph.D.
Deputy Head of Unit
[6]cid:image001.gif@01D13362.41D673C0
European Commission
Secretariat General
Unit C.1 (Transparency, Document Management and Access to Documents)
References
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1. file:///tmp/cid:filelist.xml@01D819B5.393C7CB0
2. file:///tmp/cid:editdata.mso
3. file:///tmp/~~themedata~~
4. file:///tmp/~~colorschememapping~~
5. https://webgate.ec.testa.eu/Ares/documen...